Carnage may be middleweight Polanski but it still packs a punch. Much like Roman Polanski did with the adaptation of Death and The Maiden, he’s taken a contemporary play (in this case Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage) and given it a cinematic turnaround.

Carnage pits four adults against one another. Two sets of parents have converged to discuss an incident where the son of one couple hit the son of the other couple in the playground, necessitating major dental work. As the meeting progresses the couples start to revert into adolescents themselves, aided in equal parts by nausea and alcohol. Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz star.

Carnage is social satire pure and simple and Polanski keeps our eye on the baton of what makes these people tick. As a result our allegiance shifts from person to person throughout. Any laughs are well earned. Note that the film appears to have been shot in New York City but that’s just part of the clever set design that digitally inserts shots of the city as seen from outside the window of the film’s single setting. Obviously the film was shot in Paris where Polanski has been working for years since fleeing the United States back in the 70s.

- Michael Bergeron