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Very Bad Things

*

Rated on a 4-star scale
USA
Directed by Peter Berg
Written by Peter Berg

CAST.....
Jon Favreau.....Kyle Fisher
Christian Slater.....Robert Boyd
Daniel Stern.....Adam Berkow
Jeremy Piven.....Michael Berkow
Leland Orser.....Charles Moore
Cameron Diaz.....Laura Garrety
Jeanne Tripplehorn.....Lois Berkow
Carla Scott.....Tina
Russell B. McKenzie.....Security Guard

Violence has a place in the movies. I have defended, and indeed praised, some of the most controversial violent films of recent years -- "Natural Born Killers", "Mississippi Burning", "Basic Instinct", "Pulp Fiction", "The Butcher Boy" and even "Scarface" come to mind. But I cannot defend, praise or even stomach Peter Berg's "Very Bad Things". It shows us it has a moral core and a sense of right and wrong, then throws them to the winds, cackles, and invites us to join in. I did not. Nor, at the screening I attended, did the quarter of the audience who walked out before the end. Or the friend of mine who sat all the way through it with me, and proclaimed it "the most sickening film I've ever seen". That reaction is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but it gives you a fair idea of what to expect.

To be able to get your way through it with a little less trauma than the unprepared, you'll need to know the plot. Salesman Kyle Fisher (Jon Favreau) is a few days away from marrying Laura Garrety (Cameron Diaz). His buddy Robert Boyd (Christian Slater), a chain-smoking real-estate agent, has arranged a bachelor party for him in Las Vegas. There, Boyd plans, everyone can have a blast in the casinos before indulging in a big hotel room, a big stash of cocaine and alcohol, a big-screen television and a big-breasted hooker. The rest of the group is comprised of the Berkow brothers, Adam (Daniel Stern) and Michael (Jeremy Piven), who are co-workers of Fisher, and Charlie Moore (Leland Orser), a soft-spoken mechanic.

All goes as planned in Vegas until Michael, getting his money's worth out of the prostitute (Carla Scott), does so in an unlucky position and kills her by inadvertently impaling her neck on a coat hook. Panicking, the guys are divided: should they call the cops, or try and get rid of the body? Boyd, with an output of self-help formulas he recites so methodically there's a chance he's just swallowed a walkman at full volume, eventually wins his pals round to the seedier option. Just as they're about to delve into the execution of the plan, however, they're interrupted by a hotel security guard (Russell B. McKenzie), who is concerned about the noise coming from the room. He sees the body, and so Boyd brutally murders him with several plunges of a corkscrew into the guy's heart.

After cutting up the two bodies, and performing an ugly burial in the desert, the guys return from Vegas looking understandably dishevelled and distressed. Adam then discovers from a newspaper that the security guard was a father of two, and starts cracking up, guilt-ridden and paranoid. Michael is next, then Boyd, who turns into a worse psycho, killing everybody he knows who he thinks could give the game away. Laura, who cares about nothing but the smooth running of her wedding ceremony, does not know about everything that's happened, but through other actions is gradually revealed to be as cold-hearted as Boyd.

For a while, the film feels like it's going to be terrific -- perhaps a darkly comic version of "Deliverance" for the 90s. Writer-director Berg seems to be controlling its tone rather well, and the send-ups of wedding obsession and self-help garbage are working. The characters are convincing. The initial scenes in the hotel room are directed and edited beautifully, capturing with dead-on accuracy the stress and anxiety of being in a situation where you and your whole group are wasted when something severe happens.

Then, as soon as the security guard is stabbed, the whole tone seems to shift. The scene is drawn out for a sadistic length of time, as we hear him, locked in the bathroom, writhing in agony, begging and pleading as he bleeds to death.

It's raw and painful to experience, unnecessarily so, because Berg doesn't seem to have a purpose for the rawness or pain except to laugh at us for feeling those emotions. From here on out, he just slaps conscientious viewers in the face, because after his brilliantly evoked realism is established, he decides to make a joke out of it. When cutting up the bodies and cleaning up the blood, the characters keep slipping and falling in slapstick fashion. When disposing the dismembered parts, and trying to keep each person's together, there is a lot of confusion involving the call girl's Asian and the security guard's black flesh, intended for 'humorous' effect. A scene at a funeral sees Michael almost dragging the rabbi to the floor before tripping over chairs and falling into the grave. When Laura's madness comes to a head in the form of cruel violent blows, each one echoes with a comic clonk. All of these nasty scenes are accompanied by swift pop tunes.

Then, at the end of the film, when there are only two living characters left with any shred of decency, Berg gives us a final distasteful shock to the system, adding a new and ugly twist to their fates. This is so he can end with a completely gratuitous scene that brings his mocking playground-bully manner to such low depths that it doubles our distress. Watching this appalling little epilogue left me aghast enough to feel like the wind had been knocked out of me.

If the whole film had the balance of seriousness and humour that it opened with, it could have been something really special. If the whole film had been as silly as it gets, it could have been funny -- there's potential for tasteless amusement in any subject. But not with any method, and I object to Berg's desire to have his cake and eat it, to extract goofy toilet humour out of a grave situation we have earnest involvement in. "In the Company of Men" and "There's Something About Mary" are both good movies, but "Very Bad Things" proves that their styles go together about as well as the good inventions of toasters and baths.

Let it be said that the acting in "Very Bad Things" is, for the most part, faultless. Slater and Diaz are at times chilling, at times entertaining. Piven, whose character is not very clearly defined in the writing, makes him interesting nonetheless. Favreau, Orsner and Stern all win our favour and sympathy. The technical aspects of the picture are also fine, with well-done special effects, sound, photography and editing. This film's problem isn't that it's amateurish, or boring. It's revolting.

COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian Waldron-Mantgani

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