What do you do when you finally hit your breaking point and can't take anymore in life? In February 2000, Henry hit that point, and then things got weird...
Directing this 99 minute thriller/horror is George A. Romero.
Some of the cast is: Jason Flemyng as Henry Creedlow, Nina Garbiras as Janine Creedlow, Peter Stormare as Miles Styles, Leslie Hope as Rosemary Newley and Tom Atkins as Detective McCleary.
Henry has been pushed around by almost everyone in his life. Respect is a hard thing to find when it comes to his wife, friends, boss or even his dog. Henry believed in following the rules, keeping your head down and
not stirring the pot. Unfortunately, that way of life hasn't gotten Henry anywhere but hurt, overworked, and mistreated. Yet, after Henry wakes up to a plain white mask stuck to his face, things begin to change for him.
First off, I really like Flemyng. I think he's a really good actor. So after I saw him as the main star I was wanting to watch this one. As it turns out, this American/French thriller was a good movie. The storyline that Romero, yeah the big man wrote and directed this flick (without one zombie ever popping up), came up with isn't exactly new. We've all seen a hundred stories with the little guy getting picked on or walked all over, but Romero put a nice spin on the story with the whole mask thing.
The playthrough has it's funny moments along side the personal grow/change of the character throughout the movie. I didn't have any problem with getting bored with this flick, because the pace was good and the characters are pretty entertaining. Even though Flemyng was one of the reasons for watching this, I also dig catching films with Stormare. I get a kick out of Stormare's wild and a-holeish characters that we tend to see a lot in his movies.
As for the cast, I think everyone did a great job. Some of the weak points that are sprinkled through the movie (cause there's not a lot of them) come more from a weak dialogue rather than a weak cast. Every now and then, conversations seemed more forced or maybe overplayed, like they were trying to reinforce the scene and didn't come off so smooth. Again, it doesn't happen that often and doesn't hurt the playthrough at all. Which by the way, the playthrough is pretty cool, and held my attention all the way through the movie.
Overall, I thought this was a cool movie and well worth the time to watch it. It's not action packed but has a good pace and can hold it's own in the thriller department. I didn't even know Romero did this movie until it was over and I got to say, the man does great work, like we didn't already know that. I wouldn't mind seeing some more stuff like this from him.
It's rated R for nudity, violence and language.
3 stars
