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"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil." - Hannah Arendt
Based on several real life cases, writer/director Craig Zobel's "Compliance" sees a gang of fast food workers stripping, humiliating and sexually violating a co-worker (Dreama Walker). Why? Because a man impersonating a police officer instructed them to do so.
"Compliance's" material allows it to flirt with various interesting themes. It touches upon the ease at which man absolves himself of moral responsibility, alludes to an erosion of civil rights, and points to both our blind obedience to authority and the ways in which such authority relies heavily on sheer faith. Interspersed with the film's horrors are more mundane activities; Arendt's "banality of evil" writ large.
Whilst "Compliance" conjures up everything from the Nuremberg trials to Abu Ghraid to My Lai to religious cults to the way whole populations are complicit in siding with or sanctioning atrocities, it does so only by dint of its subject matter. Zobel himself brings nothing to the picture, and his handling of "Compliance's" material is mostly inept. To make things worse, the film ends with a subplot which is hell-bent on revealing the fate of the "man responsible" for the crime depicted. This is odd. The film opens on an American flag, suggesting a more abstract, widespread social problem. Zobel's final subplot, however, narrows "Compliance's" focus. Better to simply end the film 10 minutes earlier on the line "you mean this has happened before?". Cut to black.
"Compliance" stars Dreama Walker as the film's chief victim. She's far too glamorous (and confident) for her role, lending "Compliance" an air of exploitation (Zobel casts plain actors for every role except Walker's). She's the beautiful damsel in distress, meticulously tortured for salacious audiences. The horror, crudeness and embarrassment her real life counterpart experienced is barely conveyed.
5/10 - Worth one viewing.
score /10
tieman64 17 December 2013
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2923706/ |
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29-11-2019 06:41:49