A dark thriller with a hopelessness at its core that eats away at you the same way it does with Oldman. At one point his character says "All I could think about was feed the hole, feed the hole..." That hole represents his own private Hell, one that he created and he is perpetuating - but as long as things are going smoothly, if badly, things are OK.
One great, great scene is where Oldman casually sets his gun down on the kitchen table and Sciorra - sadly, in too small a role - picks it up and points it at him. The look on his face is priceless.
This movie has the same ethos as "Bad Lieutenant", but doesn't have that movie's crushing, personally wretched banality. It's also not quite as shocking or intense. Instead, it uses its main character's arrogance and sadistic tendencies as "fatal flaws" which ultimately help to bring down an otherwise quasi-noble guy.
I liked this movie up to a point, but sometimes it feels like I'm being manipulated - shown something shocking just for the sake of it being shocking. Like the scene with Olin and Oldman in the car that is excerpted at the beginning. A lot of that is just unnecessary. It's supposed to help set the tone, but by this time the tone has already been set - these are both desperate characters with a lot to lose and little to gain.
One great, great scene is where Oldman casually sets his gun down on the kitchen table and Sciorra - sadly, in too small a role - picks it up and points it at him. The look on his face is priceless.
This movie has the same ethos as "Bad Lieutenant", but doesn't have that movie's crushing, personally wretched banality. It's also not quite as shocking or intense. Instead, it uses its main character's arrogance and sadistic tendencies as "fatal flaws" which ultimately help to bring down an otherwise quasi-noble guy.
I liked this movie up to a point, but sometimes it feels like I'm being manipulated - shown something shocking just for the sake of it being shocking. Like the scene with Olin and Oldman in the car that is excerpted at the beginning. A lot of that is just unnecessary. It's supposed to help set the tone, but by this time the tone has already been set - these are both desperate characters with a lot to lose and little to gain.