When I was at the video store yesterday I noticed they were selling It's the Rage- and I asked them if they rented it, and they didn't. So I bought it. Have you seen it? I give you the following review.
IT'S THE RAGE (2000)
A comedic look at our obsession with guns with a
delicious madcap performance by Gary Sinise.
*SILVER
Guns. Why do more and more average people feel they need
them? Why do more and more average people use them?
Through a cross-section of today’s urban life-styles, It’s the
Rage uses comedy to explore our growing fascination with
guns and its tragic consequences. At a time of heated debates
about what our right to bear arms means, this film sets the
stage for a closer look at the deeper human dimension of the
gun issue. Ultimately, guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
But, as this film illustrates, people with guns do it so much
more easily, even accidentally. With a bold, sophisticated, and
humorous touch, It’s the Rage dramatizes the intricate social
and individual conditions that have transformed guns into tools
of immediate conflict resolution and mystical personal power.
The script written by Keith Reddin based on his play rallied a
power ensemble cast under the guidance of an accomplished
theatre producer and first time film director James Stern. Joan
Allen plays the central character Helen who is awakened one
night by gunshots. She finds her husband Warren (Jeff
Daniels) looming over the body of an intruder he shot.
Humorous panic buffers the initial shock, but the horror
escalates when Helen realizes the intruder is Warren’s long
time business partner. The incident shatters the already rocky
marriages, and Helen abandons her upper scale home.
Warren glosses over the event and breezes through the police
investigation with his lawyer Tim (Andre Braugher). Tim is
abhorred by Warren’s trigger-happy delusional personality, but
he too soon faces the power of gun-ownership when his lover
Chris (David Schwimmer) gives him a small, engraved pistol as
a gift. In a delicious twist, Tim, a wealthy black professional
living with a jealous “artsy” gay man in an elegant flat, starts
having an affair with a blonde bimbo (Anna Paguin), whose
in-and-out of prison brother (Giovanni Ribisi) is ready to shoot
anyone who crosses her.
Helen meanwhile becomes an assistant to the childish and
lonely high-tech billionaire Mr. Morgan (Gary Sinise). Mr.
Morgan’s head is splitting with migraines caused by the
information overload, and the laser-guided semi-automatic in
his desk drawer is dangerously too close to his cracking
psychology. Mr. Morgan’s previous assistant Tennel (Josh
Brolin), a man of weepy sweetness and delicious naïveté
dreams of fame as a film director, but ends up as a video store
clerk who falls madly in love with Annabel, the blonde bimbo.
Thus, the connections of sadly and comically flawed
individuals of vast social differences are heightened by the
presence of guns. When and why those guns are drawn may
invoke memories of the Frontier days, but the issues that are
resolved with gunfire only indicate that, despite our more
civilized appearance, we are just as incapable of addressing
our emotional subtext as we have ever been.
Amidst the accomplished cast, Gary Sinise pulls out all the
stops in a breathless performance that sheds the brightest light
on the issue the film raises. In his loveless, isolated, childishly
indulged, and immature life, he is buckling under the weight of
impersonal technology that provides every type of distraction,
but cannot give the slightest pleasure of an authentic human
exchange. The frustrations that mount in fruitless
communication with the seemingly self-absorbed, disinterested
world eventually erupt into rage that is easily quenched with
guns. In a sense, each character struggles in the void of
disconnection, and most cannot be saved.
The ensemble cast is captivating in the range of personalities
they cover. However, their personalities are static. We don’t
really have the satisfaction of seeing them change and grow in
their understanding of who they are and why they do what they
do. The humor emerges from the intertwining of discontent and
idiosyncrasies – both as strengths and weaknesses. We may
laugh, but there is insufficient depth to really move us to
emotional or intellectual understanding.
With cinematography and set design enhancing the outer and
inner world of each character, along with irony that takes the
edge off, we cannot help being draw into the complex
challenges that confront our right to bear arms in the evolving
but still explosively fragile humanity. |
