Men With Guns (Skogland)

In this film, the young female director Kari Skogland tackles the indestructible clichés of a typically macho cinema genre: the modern gangster film. As befits the genre, this film too is about a rip deal that gets out of hand. Two petty criminals, Eddie & Lucas, want to make it, but badly misjudge the quality of the opposition. They are taken down a step or two and raped. That awakens hell-fire in them. They get hold of guns (turn into Men with Guns) and gruesomely take their revenge. Their mistake is that they steal a suitcase of cocaine from local crime lord Burke. That signs their death warrant. They will die, that's for sure, but no one knows how.The film is the most extreme exponent of the so-called movement of the Nouvelle Violence. It is dirtier, more rancid and violent than anything made before. It is Tarantino without irony, even without cynicism; it offers straightforward dirty and hysterical violence. Precisely because Skogland ventured into this male territory and because it is her first film with gun violence, she paid extra attention to making the shooting matches realistic. She did not want any filmic, but real deadly effects. She wanted the bullets to whistle around the spectators and the blood to drip off the screen. (GjZ)The film is the most extreme exponent of the so-called movement of the Nouvelle Violence. It is dirtier, more rancid and violent than anything made before. It is Tarantino without irony, even without cynicism; it offers straightforward dirty and hysterical violence. Precisely because Skogland ventured into this male territory and because it is her first film with gun violence, she paid extra attention to making the shooting matches realistic. She did not want any filmic, but real deadly effects. She wanted the bullets to whistle around the spectators and the blood to drip off the screen. (GjZ)