countryguitar Review of Rage

Rage (I) (2009)

An utter disaster - 99 minutes of inane tosh about nothing at all

[1/10 · 5 October 2009]

This was billed as something groundbreaking and exciting. Live Premiere, London's BFI/Southbank linking up with screens in cinemas all over the place, big name cast, new type of genre. As we sat, we waited, we watched and we waited some more. This is 99 minutes of absolutely mind numbingly boring schlock. Interviews set to a blue/red/green screen. Not a single line has any meaning, is well acted or engaging. Big names such as Judi Dench, Jude Law, Dianne Wiest and Eddie Izzard appear almost as if they have been held hostage and forced to read garbage from an autocue to secure their release. Apparently writer/director Sally Potter's film is about how 'fashion wrecks lives' and she aims to expose the shallow world of fashion in a lighthearted way (it's billed as a comedy). In reality, we are treated to one pathetic interview after another, no outside shots, no story, plot, nothing. The reviews are consistently bad, and as one reviewer wrote on the IMDb "one of the dullest and most purposeless movies I've ever seen in my entire life". The audience in my cinema agreed, they began to walk out in such numbers, that at one point I began to wonder if this was some kind of hoax and we were being filmed as part of an experiment about the staying power of a cinema-goers. Rage shows how ugly and downright wrong it is to allow the production, fiancé and distribution of 'anything goes' cinema.