TORTURE ME NO MORE

Welcome to "The City. The Noisy City. The Dangerous City". A place - indeed, the point seems to be that this could be any place - where people can steal handbags in broad daylight, unnoticed by the hustle and bustle of honking cars and people rushing about their business.

The film then moves in closer to witness life in "The Suburbs". Here, living in urban decay, we meet computer hacker Sal (Jason Liebig) who's fresh out of prison, after doing time for his electronic misdeeds. He moves into a squalid apartment with his younger, mentally challenged brother Chancy (Chris Carr).

One day when Sal leaves their apartment to pick up a pizza from around the corner, a robber - who just happens to look identical to Sal - breaks into the apartment, kills Chancy and, bizarrely, takes off with their pet dog.

All of which is witnessed by the gay couple living in the same tenement block. That's bad news for Sal, as he's pinned with the murder of his own brother.

But Sal's not about to go back into prison for a crime he didn't commit. Furthermore, he desperately wants to find his brother's killer. The first thing this means is keeping one step ahead of highly strung cops Kellerman (Joanna Bonaro) and Fischer (Anna Kepe), an unappealing double-act determined to bring our beanie-wearing antihero in.

Meanwhile, as the cops bicker relentlessly and writer-director Francis Xavier DeGenarro spirals his arty cameras past down-and-out peripheral characters in an attempt to throw some weight over this trite scenario, Sal retreats into the "city"'s underbelly and hooks up with wired pal Babe (Duncan Wright) who unwittingly leads him to the sinister porn video-maker Fachio (Chris McLamore).

It's here that Sal meets kindred spirit Delilah (Kristina Doran), who determines to help the computer nerd in his quest for the truth.

Together they race through episodic confrontations with quirky characters as they inadvertently become a vigilante duo resolved to taking on scumbags such as paedophiles and serial killers (cue a couple of extremely dark torture scenes), while they also begin to pick up clues as to how to find Chancy's killer ... which in turn lead them down and into some very dark avenues indeed.

A scatty camera style and artsy-editing disposition make DeGenarro's directorial debut appear more compelling than it ought to be at first. Curious cuts to seemingly unrelated events in the early scenes insinuate the unfolding of a gritty expose on modern city life. It feels substantial - like we're witnessing the latest rough'n'ready example of primal street filmmaking.

But no, DeGennaro cannot tell a story and soon enough all of the above, along with his claustrophobic cropping techniques and swirling handheld camera patterns are incapable of disguising that this is not a very good film.

Certainly, it is true that TORTURE has a consistent offbeat style about it that raises it above the technical levels of the other films in the current batch of Brain Damage releases. The muted colour schemes and jazz-influenced madness of the piano-led score offer evidence of further thought that has gone into the feel of this film. But the narrative has been compromised as a result.

This wouldn't matter so much if the mood of TORTURE had more to offer. But it's uneven, unengaging and hampered further by some lousy supporting performances that dilute any tension the ham-fisted script may have elicited.

The tone careens wildly throughout between contemplative stalls and noisy, shout-infested scraps, mixing bad comedy banter (the two female cops are the main offenders) clumsily alongside gritty violence and downbeat situations. For a film that seemingly wants to rely heavily on its tone, it can never decide how it expects its audience to react.

Throw in a tonne of profanity, gratuitous allusions to bestiality and S&M that never manage to be as graphic as they sound, and a host of sub-Hitchcockian miscreants in the peripheral cast, and what you have is a film that strives to be a shocking work of art ... but comes across as simply annoying - and, at 108 minutes in length - far too long.

While there are some interesting 'film school' techniques employed and some keen observations on the underbelly of modern life, there are not enough ideas that work - nor does this ever feel authentic enough - for this to succeed without a strong narrative at it's core. Consequently, TORTURE becomes a hollow and laborious experience.

The film is presented uncut in non-anamorphic 2.35:1. I strongly suspect that the ratio was originally more akin to 1.33:1, and that DeGenarro has matted the film at 2.35:1 to make it appear more cinematic. This effect is partially successful in that it does make many scenes feel up-close and claustrophobic. Colours are strained - again, it looks intentional - and detail is reasonable.

The English 2.0 audio is problem-free throughout.

The static main menu page leads into a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 4 chapters.

As with the other Brain Damage discs, this DVD's only 'extras' are trailers for PREY FOR THE BEAST, SERUM, DEATH OF A GHOST HUNTER, SECRETS OF THE CLOWN, SILENT BLOODNIGHT and - of course - TORTURE ME NO MORE.

Ambitious and at times stylish in a low-rent manner, TORTURE ME NO MORE should be commended for what it attempts to do. The trouble is, it's not very successful at it. As a result, it's a confused and overlong film that fails to hold the viewer's interest.

Review by Stu Willis