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Cripes!  What a waste!

You might wonder how you could go wrong with a movie about Sam Jackson as a racist cop terrorizing a mixed-race couple.

For starters, you could let Neil LaBute direct it.  As soon as his name popped up in the credits, I knew I had wasted my ticket money.  At least LaBute reigned in his rampant misogyny a little this time around.  Sure, the wife quits taking her pills because she just has to have a baby right now and she doesn't give a damn if her husband wants to or not, and we're obviously supposed to be siding with hubby when he gets (mildly) p**sed off, but that's pretty tame for a Neil LaBute movie.  The entire movie doesn't dwell on how trecherous, scheming, inconsiderate, domineering, and evil women are, like some of his others.

Actually, the movie doesn't dwell on anything.  We've got Sam Jackson as a racist cop and his sloooooowly escalating quest to mildly annoy his neighbors but that's not really what the movie's about.  We've got the married couple and their personal problems but that's not what the movie's about.  We've got Sam Jackson's problems at work and with his kids but that's not what the movie's about.  We've even got raging wildfires threatening to burn down the neighborhood but that's not what the movie's about, either.

So what is it about?

Eh, nothing really.  All those loose plot threads and a couple more just come and go until LaBute decides he's shot enough footage and ends things with a little brawl and a few bullets.  I guess LaBute was going for a slow burn (Hey!  Just like the wildfires!) but the movie is just slow.  Period.  The only thing it has going for it is Sam Jackson making funny faces every now and then.

I missed this one when it was in theaters.  However, it seemed that everyone was saying this was a bad movie.

Funny, LaBute started off on a pretty strong note with IN THE COMPANY OF MEN (which was anything but misogynist).  I lost track of his career and was shocked to find out he was responsible for the disastrous WICKER MAN remake.  He seemed very talented when he started out, I wonder what happened?