Raze & The Best Offer
Where angels go, trouble follows. Trouble is these gals ain’t angels, but there’s definitely a fracas brewing. There’s a bit of ambivalence in watching a film like Raze. It’s a film where women are kept prisoners and forced to bare knuckle fight to the death.
So why shouldn’t a distaff film like this command the kind of attention one would pay to, say, Fight Club or last year’s Keanu Reeves helmed Man of Tai Chi, which basically has the same generic plot as Raze? The answer lies in the execution of the material. Even Man of Tai Chi establishes a reasonable genre verisimilitude as opposed to the cheap sets and ludicrous histrionics on display in Raze.
At best Raze offers some excellently choreographed fight scenes, and if you’re into chicks in grey sweats and tight white t-shirts pummeling each other into hamburger meat then you probably also watch stuff like those mangy videos where girls gone bad fuck each other up in battle cages. There’s no sexism here, this is a badly made movie. It makes something like the Jonathan Demme women in prison flick Caged Heat (1974) look like a masterpiece. By the way the correct way to quote this paragraph would be to paraphrase and say “Raze …. looks like a masterpiece.”
Take for example the mysterious couple that runs the death match: Doug Jones and Sherilyn Fenn. He’s a good foot taller than her so yes there is a clever visual motif established but the why or the how of the operation are never revealed. Indeed the whole budget limits the action to a jail block set, the fight cell set and a room decorated with props that show an attention to detail of a high school play.
Zoë Bell, master stuntwoman and also star of QT’s Death Proof, headlines. Bell’s Death Proof co-star Tracie Thoms also appears. Bell deserves better vehicles than Raze, pure and simple. As a bonus Ms. Bell will be appearing at the screening of Raze and presumably take sycophantic questions from the audience.
Zoë Bell’s appearance will be at the Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park on Friday January 24. Bell will also attend a screening of Death Proof that night, and that alone will be worth the price of admission.
The Best Offer (La migliore offerta) should garner your attention just for the director and cast. Giuseppe Tornatore writes and directs Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hoeks, and Donald Sutherland in a story of art auctions and obsessions with fine paintings. While the film is an international production the proceedings are in English.
Rush may be the oldest virgin on the planet or perhaps just a prim type of gentleman. But when he meets Hoeks, a reclusive woman who wants to sell off her family heirlooms, he drops his pretentious manner. In fact, at this point Rush starts to stalk her, but in a harmless enough way that the whole sick relationship becomes reciprocal.
While you won’t be comparing Tornatore’s latest to his accomplished Cinema Paradiso (1988) there’s still enough design, appreciation of art, and eventually a little mystery to make the experience worthwhile.
Both Raze and The Best Offer are opening exclusively at the Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park this weekend.
— Michael Bergeron
- MBergeron
- Jimmy
