shutter nick

Everyone’s favourite day of the week is here and that means another Monday of movie reviews. As usual, two movies over the weekend and both were thrillers in their own right. The first was State of Play, a dialogue-thriller with minimal action while the second was Last House on the Left, a thriller with lots of violence and gore.

Let’s first talk about State of Play. It features a pretty strong cast with Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams. There is also Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman and Jeff Daniels as supporting cast so the acting is pretty much guaranteed to be top notch, unless you are not a fan of any of the above.

Based on a TV series, this is your usual thriller fare featuring a conspiracy theory of a big conglomerate out to dominate a particular industry in the US. You have your sex scandal, your big-boys-doing-whatever-it-takes story, and a link to the Homeland Security of the USA.

As standard as the plot can be, the delivery is pretty much perfect. A dialogue-heavy movie, it can still keep your attention as there is never really a slow moment in the movie. And just when you thought you figured it all out, the direction changes quickly. If you are in the mood for a thriller of this type, then go watch it.

I was expecting this to be a scream-affair but it was surprisingly not that screamy. Coming from Wes Craven, this is pretty much lets-mutilate-as-many-things-as-we-can approach. While there is still the sadistic criminals, the twist is that the good guys now gets to torture the bad guys.

Unfortunately, our censorship board decided that they wanted to be free with their snip scissors so watching this on the local screen will leave you feeling that the movie got mutilated itself. Fortunately, the gory scenes were left pretty untouched unless it so happened to feature someone cursing at the same time.

However, if you are a gore fan, this can be quite a tame affair, definitely not to the levels of Saw or Hostel. But do remember to stay until the end because thats the best part of the movie. Too bad it took only all of 30 seconds.