This is the kind of film that should never be made. If anyone gets a chance, watch the director's commentary on the DVD version. It became very apparent that Matthew Bright is about as knowledgeable about film and the film process as a drunken wombat in a sewer pipe. In between insipid remarks about how sequences without a lot of cuts are like plays (whoa! really?!) he gradually disturbed me more than the film itself. I didn't notice immediately, but throughout the commentary, I began to note his love of young girls. He'd drop lines such as, "Oh, Reese looks so cute there," before outright declaring his affections for underaged females. Furthermore, his attempt at being "hip" is to merely employ, yet again, the shock effect. I could just see him sitting and writing this banal script, thinking about how funny and cool it would be to have a violated, strangled grandmother. The entire movie is infused with pointless, senseless violence. There is a GOOD disturbing, and there is a BAD disturbing, and this movie falls into the latter.

This movie is formulated crap that should not be encouraged. Why did it attract such star power? Why does violent cynicism attract such big names? Why did Roger Ebert give it three and a half stars? Sutherland's performance is piteously bad, as if he is reciting lines in a high school play. Reese was given the sparsely funny lines, and she is the lone bright element in this wretched excuse for violence.

Response From RinkWorks:

Against elitist opinion, I agree with you. There's no subtext here, just the admittedly convincing illusion of it. My more in-depth take on this movie can be found in the first reader review for this movie and in At-A-Glance Film Reviews. -- Sam.