SAN JUAN DEL SUR, NICARAGUA -- The serial killer on board the cruise ship MS Maasdam arrived packed in huge round metal cans.
He wasn't dangerous -- but you would never know it considering the sometimes angry, often incoherent, invariably opinionated reaction he is generating among passengers.
American Psycho has just been screened at the sixth bi-annual Floating Film Festival. It was called everything from "senseless pornography" to "a brilliant deconstruction of the American Dream." Still others shrugged it off. Some raged that, "We've been cheated!"
This is only the second time the film has been seen in public. The controversial Mary Harron opus made its world premiere just last month at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and won't open in theatres until April.
If the vitriol -- and praise -- that American Psycho inspired among the 215 Floaters is any indication, the made-in-Toronto film will be in for a rough but interesting ride as it lunges towards its commercial opening.
The film, adapted for the screen by Harron (the daughter of Toronto actor-comedian Don Harron) and Guinevere Turner, is based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, which created its own uproar with its early '80s saga of a Wall Street Yuppie obsessed with consumerism, status and murder.
The slick, highly stylized movie contains scenes of violence and sex, including a menage-a-trois with the anti-hero and two hookers he beds and beats up. Our killer, played fearlessly by Christian Bale, also murders dozens, including a co-worker he hacks up with an axe in a fit of maniacal glee.
But it isn't the violence or the sex that has people up in arms. Neither of those elements is especially graphic.
"Sex and violence, it just isn't there on the screen," says Mary Corliss of the Museum of Modern Art. She thinks it absurd that U.S. censors slapped an NC-17 rating on it, which has Lion's Gate contemplating making cuts.
Marcelle Lean, chairman of the Ontario Film Development Corp. and a former Ontario film review board member, didn't much like it, but found the film thought-provoking and never over-the-top. "It would get an 'R' rating in Ontario with a few warnings. I don't see a problem."
There is no end of opinions about the film. A sampling:
Lou Clancy, our own Sunday Sun editor, came down in the middle. "I'm indifferent to it. I understand the film but she (Harron) didn't reach out and grab me. The sex and violence were both highly overrated. My problem is that there is no central character to sympathize with."
"It's a one-joke movie and we got it," famed film sales agent Jeff Dowd fumed, trashing the actors and the story-telling.
"This is just a slasher film," says cyberspace wizard Harry Knowles, famous for being a thorn in Hollywood's side with his film Web site (www.aintitcool. com). "There is no real difference between this and Friday The 13th."
Powerful U.S. critic Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs down: "It is consumer pornography for our titillation told in a movie that doesn't have the balls to make a commitment," he says.
It was left to Seattle critic Jim Emerson, the Floating filmfest programmer who brought American Psycho on board, to defend his choice, which he was seeing for the first time.
"This is not quite what I expected. It's a lot cleverer. It's funny and it's kind of insightful." I agree with Emerson.
Stay tuned -- no one has heard the last of this psycho.
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