All the Rage (or It's the Rage, as it's call on video) has the makings to be one of those great LA ensemble films, a Magnolia or a Shortcuts. Instead, it has the reality of one of those crappy LA ensemble films, a Two Days In the Valley. The film squanders a super cast and a hot button topic and it falls into dogmatic clichés almost instantly. This movie is proof that even if you're politics are in the right place, if you don't give any thought to what you're doing, you can make a mess of things. As a liberal, I found myself actually seeing how this movie could sour people on gun control advocacy and that's certainly not what its purpose was.
All the Rage has no real plot, so there's no point in going into it. There are a handful of one dimensional characters unified by the fact that somewhere in the film's 98 minutes, a gun will change their lives. There's a gay lawyer (Andre Braugher), his jealous boyfriend (David Schwimmer), a businessman (Jeff Daniels), his wife (Joan Allen, an underage klepto (Anna Paquin), her bonkers brother (Giovanni Ribisi), a wealthy eccentric (Gary Sinise), his Hollywood-dreaming assistant (Josh Brolin) and two cops (Bokeem Woodbine and Robert Forster). The reasons why these people all have guns isn't really explained beyond the hardly original idea that guns produce feelings of power. The opening credits, featuring home video style footage of parents, children, and guns intercut with newspaper stories on gun violence offers the hardly subtle suggestion that the role of guns in our society is generational and that people clearly don't take guns and their dangerous possibilities as seriously as they should.
And on a basic ideological level it's impossible for me to argue with All the Rage. Guns are dangerous. I don't think *anybody* would disagree with that. And guns kill people. That's also tough to dispute. And since the film has a dedication at the end, I assume that for the film's writer Keith Reddin, this was a very personal story and message. That's part of why the film's execution is so infuriating for me.
In All the Rage, at least a half dozen guns appear on screen. Five of them kill people within the film's running time. We don't know where anybody got their guns, whether or not they were registered, and whether or not the owners had legal permits to carry their guns. Why not? Because apparently it doesn't matter. Even the guns issued to the police officers are put in an ethically negative light. Clearly, as depicted here, there is no such thing as a legitimately owned gun. While the film has lost a good portion of its audience with this argument, I can at least accept it as a black comedy, rather than an attempt at mandating a position. Where the movie loses me is the total stereotypes of gun owners and the committers of gun violence. The paranoid yuppie business man? Check. Jealous homosexual? Check. Crazy teen? Check. Because none of the characters in the film are portrayed as psychologically balanced, we basically get a situation where only "deviants" have guns. This is fatal for the film because it takes away anything resembling complexity. The use of the gun, as depicted in this film, can never be a rational decision, or certainly not a decision carried out (however rashly) by a rational person. If I were a gunowner who had my gun locked in a safe for defending my home, or for hunting in a safe and legal manner and yet still supported basic controls on guns (waiting periods, ammo restrictions, etc) this film would outrage me. The lack of balance cripples the film's dramatic drive. I didn't even begin to care about these characters or their choices because it was so clear that the decks were stacked against them.
My immediate response was that All the Rage was just badly written. There are extended monologues that are stilted and unilluminating. However, it turns out that Reddin was adapting his own play, which justifies the speachifying. Thus, I'm inclined to blame first time director James D. Stern, who keeps the film claustrophobic is unable to produce any kind of comic momentum in the scenes that are clearly intended to be dark comedy. Additionally, despite an apparent LA setting, the film has no sense of place. It could almost take place in Iowa, but that kind of Midwestern setting would break with the movie's abundant obviousness. Stern is also unable to take advantage of the ample talents of his cast.
In case you weren't keeping score when I mentioned the actors in the film, there are four Oscar nominees (and Jeff Daniels *has* been nominated for two Golden Globe awards for his filmwork), three Emmy nominees (Gary Sinise is in both categories), and Independent Spirit Award nominee Ribisi. What made these very fine thespians do this movie? Well, several of them have colorful characters including Sinise's twitchy computer programmer. Some get to play against type (though Schwimmer's character sounds much too much light a slightly gay Ross). And some get to play leads for a change (for these are really all character actors, rather than A-list stars). Probably the film's script also appealed to some kind of basic Hollywood liberalism and somebody may have been duped into thinking they were doing important work.
Instead the performances fall into three categories: The phoned in performance, the overacting performance, or the "well I've seen that before" performance. In the first group are Braugher, Schwimmer, and Allen, each of whom should know better, though I guess they've gotta eat. In the second category are Sinise and Daniels who both yell a lot in the name of characterization. And finally Anna Paquin is playing the same part as in Hurly Burly, Forster the same part as in Jackie Brown (or else Robert Duvall's part from Falling Down), and Giovanni Ribisi is doing the same demented man-child routine he does in most of his work. Regarding Ribisi, I would have to say that if I hadn't seen The Boiler Room and Saving Private Ryan, I would be truly doubting his talent after all the horrible performances he's turned in.
If you're a liberal Democrat, it's easy to want to support this movie. It makes very clear points about the fact that the United States has become a country where gun violence is both mundane and an epidemic. And yet All the Rage blows all that good will. It makes a complex debate far too childish. Even the Frankenstein monster could have grunted out "Guns... Baaaaaaaad." And that's really all that's happening in this 3/10 film.
All the Rage has no real plot, so there's no point in going into it. There are a handful of one dimensional characters unified by the fact that somewhere in the film's 98 minutes, a gun will change their lives. There's a gay lawyer (Andre Braugher), his jealous boyfriend (David Schwimmer), a businessman (Jeff Daniels), his wife (Joan Allen, an underage klepto (Anna Paquin), her bonkers brother (Giovanni Ribisi), a wealthy eccentric (Gary Sinise), his Hollywood-dreaming assistant (Josh Brolin) and two cops (Bokeem Woodbine and Robert Forster). The reasons why these people all have guns isn't really explained beyond the hardly original idea that guns produce feelings of power. The opening credits, featuring home video style footage of parents, children, and guns intercut with newspaper stories on gun violence offers the hardly subtle suggestion that the role of guns in our society is generational and that people clearly don't take guns and their dangerous possibilities as seriously as they should.
And on a basic ideological level it's impossible for me to argue with All the Rage. Guns are dangerous. I don't think *anybody* would disagree with that. And guns kill people. That's also tough to dispute. And since the film has a dedication at the end, I assume that for the film's writer Keith Reddin, this was a very personal story and message. That's part of why the film's execution is so infuriating for me.
In All the Rage, at least a half dozen guns appear on screen. Five of them kill people within the film's running time. We don't know where anybody got their guns, whether or not they were registered, and whether or not the owners had legal permits to carry their guns. Why not? Because apparently it doesn't matter. Even the guns issued to the police officers are put in an ethically negative light. Clearly, as depicted here, there is no such thing as a legitimately owned gun. While the film has lost a good portion of its audience with this argument, I can at least accept it as a black comedy, rather than an attempt at mandating a position. Where the movie loses me is the total stereotypes of gun owners and the committers of gun violence. The paranoid yuppie business man? Check. Jealous homosexual? Check. Crazy teen? Check. Because none of the characters in the film are portrayed as psychologically balanced, we basically get a situation where only "deviants" have guns. This is fatal for the film because it takes away anything resembling complexity. The use of the gun, as depicted in this film, can never be a rational decision, or certainly not a decision carried out (however rashly) by a rational person. If I were a gunowner who had my gun locked in a safe for defending my home, or for hunting in a safe and legal manner and yet still supported basic controls on guns (waiting periods, ammo restrictions, etc) this film would outrage me. The lack of balance cripples the film's dramatic drive. I didn't even begin to care about these characters or their choices because it was so clear that the decks were stacked against them.
My immediate response was that All the Rage was just badly written. There are extended monologues that are stilted and unilluminating. However, it turns out that Reddin was adapting his own play, which justifies the speachifying. Thus, I'm inclined to blame first time director James D. Stern, who keeps the film claustrophobic is unable to produce any kind of comic momentum in the scenes that are clearly intended to be dark comedy. Additionally, despite an apparent LA setting, the film has no sense of place. It could almost take place in Iowa, but that kind of Midwestern setting would break with the movie's abundant obviousness. Stern is also unable to take advantage of the ample talents of his cast.
In case you weren't keeping score when I mentioned the actors in the film, there are four Oscar nominees (and Jeff Daniels *has* been nominated for two Golden Globe awards for his filmwork), three Emmy nominees (Gary Sinise is in both categories), and Independent Spirit Award nominee Ribisi. What made these very fine thespians do this movie? Well, several of them have colorful characters including Sinise's twitchy computer programmer. Some get to play against type (though Schwimmer's character sounds much too much light a slightly gay Ross). And some get to play leads for a change (for these are really all character actors, rather than A-list stars). Probably the film's script also appealed to some kind of basic Hollywood liberalism and somebody may have been duped into thinking they were doing important work.
Instead the performances fall into three categories: The phoned in performance, the overacting performance, or the "well I've seen that before" performance. In the first group are Braugher, Schwimmer, and Allen, each of whom should know better, though I guess they've gotta eat. In the second category are Sinise and Daniels who both yell a lot in the name of characterization. And finally Anna Paquin is playing the same part as in Hurly Burly, Forster the same part as in Jackie Brown (or else Robert Duvall's part from Falling Down), and Giovanni Ribisi is doing the same demented man-child routine he does in most of his work. Regarding Ribisi, I would have to say that if I hadn't seen The Boiler Room and Saving Private Ryan, I would be truly doubting his talent after all the horrible performances he's turned in.
If you're a liberal Democrat, it's easy to want to support this movie. It makes very clear points about the fact that the United States has become a country where gun violence is both mundane and an epidemic. And yet All the Rage blows all that good will. It makes a complex debate far too childish. Even the Frankenstein monster could have grunted out "Guns... Baaaaaaaad." And that's really all that's happening in this 3/10 film.