SnoopyStyle
Jude (Cameron Diaz), Pete (Ron Eldard), Paulie (Annabeth Gish), Marc (Jonathan Penner) and Luke (Courtney B. Vance) are liberal grad-students having a dinner in Iowa. It's a yearly tradition that they invite someone to have an open discussion. It's a stormy night. Pete invites over Zachary Cody (Bill Paxton) whose car broke down. Soon, Zachary shows himself to be a racist, religious redneck. He's a Desert Storm vet and a Holocaust denier. The discussion turns heated with Zach holding a knife to Jewish Marc's throat. Pete tries to turn the table but Zach breaks his arm. Marc kills Zach by stabbing him in the back. The group argues. Luke convinces them to bury the body. Sheriff Alice Stanley (Nora Dunn) is investigating a missing woman. The group decides to kill more people being the judge, the jury and even the executioners.This group is too smart to not call the cops after killing Zach. At least, the two girls who had nothing to do with the killing would go to the cops. It would be a better story to not have the liberals stumble into the first killing. Let them be fully cold-blooded killers in a school project sort of way. The whole thing feels very manufactured. This is more of an exercise rather than something with real feelings and real characters. This is something made up around a warped dinner party.
Mohammad Mamunur rashid
"You're a time traveler. It's 1909 in Austria. You're in a pub having a schnapps with a stranger, a young art student with one testicle. Let's say his name is Adolf. Adolf at this point in his life has done no wrong. He's not bitter. He's not angry. He's committed no crime. He does not bring knives to dinner. He has not killed anybody. He certainly hasn't started a world war. Your point being? Do you kill him? Do you poison his schnapps to save all those millions of innocent people?"This movie tackles one of the most challenging questions of philosophy in the most entertaining way. Hollywood never stops surprising me. What an excellent piece of art!
Nooshin Navidi
Takes the proverbial "eye for an eye" to a whole new level, with an ending both unexpected and... well... perfect.This film is dark but delicious albeit a bit (or very!) morbid. I actually found myself getting too angry listening to the first dinner guest and almost stopped watching, but hung in there and soon perked up once his fate became known (terrible, I know, but hey, this was only 2 years after the Bush II era and I was still reeling from the endless atrocities...) Disturbing plot? Very. But hell, it was therapeutic!A guilty pleasure for sure (but only for the obvious half of the population. ;)
b-gaist
An unusual dark comedy about the unconscious forces which propel all ideology, whether it be of the conservative right-wing, or liberal left-wing variety. In its premise, it reminded me a little of the play "Le Malentendu" (The Misuderstanding) by Camus. Sure, some of the acting was a bit wooden and yes, the characters did lack depth, but there is little space for depth of character development in a movie of this genre anyway. The questions it asks are philosophical, about the nature of the human mind in general: hence the way Marc and his girlfriend at first were turned on, then gradually became estranged as their gratuitous villainy became more conscious was a comment on the dark side of sexuality; the same comment was made about human aggression when the character who shot clay pigeons for a hobby suddenly decides to shoot a real live bird - in fact, that seems to be a decisive moment in the film, the expression on the character's face when he shoots the bird says it all. It may be unpleasant to think about these aspects of our nature, but I wish more intelligent films like this came out of Hollywood.
AD
