Bruiser

[TC]

Watching this movie today left me wondering what has happened to George Romero.  Wasn't he rumored at a very early stage to do the Resident Evil movie?  He must have some kind of Hollywood clout.  Then why on Earth did he make this low budget snoozer?  Bruiser is the story of some wimpy guy (you can tell I really grew to like this character) that gets pushed-around by everyone.  His wife cheats on him and orders him around, his best friend is stealing money from him in shady business deals, and his boss (played as an over-the-top a-hole) is banging his wife.  So Wimpy  spends the first half-hour to 45 minutes discovering that people around him are abusing him and walking all over him.  In a plot twist that makes no sense, Wimpy wakes after he discovers wifey is cheating on him and finds that his face is covered with a white expressionless mask, much like the one he had tried on the previous day for a costume party.  Apparently this mask changes Wimpy's whole demeanor and he starts killing the people who have crossed him.  At the end of the movie, once his deeds are done, he discovers the white mask is gone from his face, therefore giving him his identity back.  So, the movie is basically saying that if people step all over you, you lose your identity and you need to step up and kill them.  Or something.   This movie wasn't scary at all and the acting was terrible.  The main character's boss was played way over the top to the point of being really irritating.  And Wimpy's transformation into a psycho-killer was pretty abrupt.  Instead of seeing a doctor about the mask attached to his face, he just snaps and starts spouting melodramatic babble while killing people.  Sure.  Romero, go back to making zombie movies, please.

[Drezzy]

I actually liked the movie a lot...if only for the fact that the motherf**king MISFITS were in it...

[Bonehead XL]

Bruiser was fine, but shows that Romero, like so many other horror directors (John Carpender, Wes Craven, Tobe Hopper) get rusty with age. Here's hopping Romero's next flick will be better... Can we say "Dust Of The Dead?"

[Pancho]

Wait, the MISFITS are in this?  I gotta get it.

[Chadzilla]

TC wrote:
>
> Watching this movie today left me wondering what has happened
> to George Romero.  Wasn't he rumored at a very early stage to
> do the Resident Evil movie?

Yes, but his script was too low budget gruesome for the producers (who had already sunk enough money into to turn a 2 or so million dollar movie script like Romero's in a 12 to 20 million dollar movie  in needed to return investment - people don't write scripts and treatments for free you know, it's a job).

 
> He must have some kind of Hollywood clout.  Then why on Earth did he make this low budget snoozer?  

Once upon a time Romero did, but Monkeyshines and The Dark Half, while being very well made/done, did poorly at the box office.  TDH was especially hurtful to Romero's clout because, due to Orion Pictures looming bankruptcy, the movie took THREE YEARS to get released.  This led to untrue rumors of the movie being unreleaseable.  Ironically Romero got rich in the ten years he spent not making movies in Hollywood by pitching scripts and doing rewrites (one script went through FORTY rewrites and never was produced).  Finally Romero's clout was nada, nothing, zip, zero.  So left Hollywood, returned to the Burg and made another little movie.  On the plus side, the movie is the one Romero wanted to make, the way he wanted to make.  Just scrap together some cash , grab a camera, and start shooting.
 
>
> This movie wasn't scary at all and the
> acting was terrible.  Sure.  Romero, go back to
> making zombie movies, please.

Well, it wasn't meant to be a horror movie in the first place.  And, as usual, Romero has written countless zombie scripts, but cannot get the budgets to the stories demand (i.e. 12 or so plus millions of dollars).

[Haze]

I liked Bruiser, but anyway the movie is a success at what it came to do.

The drama worked well and there was no reason to be scary anyway.

I did think the pay offs sucked with the kills and the humor was a little far between. But the movie is still a very cool idea and a fair execution so it works mostly.

[TC]

I can understand why people do like this movie....I thought it started off pretty promising.  However, once the mask is attached to Wimpy's face, I thought everything went downhill from there.  From memory, these were my major gripes with the movie:

1)  The Hollywood Horror Movie Ending -  This was just plain cheesy.  For those who saw it, I'm referring to the little sequence right before the end credits.  I would expect stuff like this from I Know What You Did Last Summer or a Halloween movie, not from a low budget George Romero movie.  Does every horror/suspense movie need to end on some goofy "the killer isn't really dead" note?   It would be nice to have a horror movie just end on a definitive note without the typical one last scare, "killer isn't really dead" thing.

2)  Wimpy's whole demeanor changes once he puts on the mask, including the way he talks.  I just didn't buy this.  Sure, I got the fact that he was standing up for himself and going after the people who wronged him.  I just didn't think it was in his character to act with no remorse for what he was doing.  He didn't gradually change into a murdering psychopath.  The only thing leading up to this are a couple of daydream sequences where he imagines doing violent things to people.  He just wakes up with the mask and BOOM.  Instant murderer/philosopher.  All of this happens with no explanation.  

3)  The payoffs really did suck, especially the laser death.  Are these kind of lasers really that available to the public?  If these deaths weren't supposed to scare, I'm not sure what their purpose was.  Okay, Wimpy killed off some really annoying and evil people and gets away with it.   I can't say I really was cheering for him or for them.  And without a character left to cheer for, what's the point?  I'm not going to get behind Wimpy and his crazy quest to kill people.  It's partly his own fault for not noticing his best friend embezzeling $30,000 over a period of two years.  When he sees his wife giving his boss a handjob at a barbecue, he just kinda stands there and watches.  If anything, Wimpy needed some kind of counseling or anger management course.  Maybe then, he wouldn't have ended up with a white mask on his face, killing people.  

I feel like I'm droning on, so I will stop there.

[Mofo Rising]

Hmm.

I thought it was a big pile of crap.  Usually I cut films a lot of leeway, but I couldn't stand BRUISER.

What's-His-Name, our protagonist, is some sort of low-rent businessman at a crappy men's magazine.  He gets no respect, but then again, he's done nothing to deserve it.  He's spineless and people walk all over him.  His wife is cheating on him with his boss.  Even his best friend is skimming money off his investments.

So after one particularly bad night, WHN wakes up with no face.  I guess this makes him some sort of "everyman".  For some reason this gives him the impetus to kill his housekeeper, who was stealing from him.  It becomes apparent that the bloodstains on the white mask are going to be his only identification.  I guess because we must be defined by the people we destroy?  Eat or be eaten?

Right.

Anyway, WHN goes around killing people who've wronged him (his wife).  There's a mix-up about his identity with the police, which provides the plot.  The movie climaxes at a "debauched" party.  After having killed enough people, WHN has finally "stood up for himself" and regains his face.  Hoorah.

He gets away scot free.  The next time we see him he's a mail boy at some firm.  He may not be raking in the big bucks, but at least he's "his own man".  There he tells off some boss, reverting his face back to the mask while a metal cover of A-Ha's "Take On Me" plays.  Yup, a metal cover of "Take On Me".

It's this philosophy at the base of it which I was thought was such crap.  George Romero must be a bitter, angry, impotent individual if he thinks this is what it takes to be a man.  "Everyman", my ass.  Standing up for one's self interests is not the same as destroying people who wrong you.

This movie is like that guy from FALLING DOWN directing a film based on his poetry.  Awful.

[JohnL]

>Does every horror/suspense movie need to end on some goofy "the killer isn't
>really dead" note?

Yes. I believe they passed a law requiring this. :-/

[Drezzy]

You're all missing the entire point of the movie...
THE MISFITS~!

[Pancho]

Yeah, I can't see how a movie with THE MISFITS and a metal version of "Take On Me" isn't the greatest movie ever.  I'm going to buy this right now.

[Drezzy]

I recognized 2 Misfits tracks, and they play at least 3, but the 3rd one is played under heavy dialogue. The 2 tracks I recognized were "Descending Angel" and "Scream." Also, the live footage for the video for "Scream" of the band was taken DIRECTLY from the movie Bruiser.

[Haze]

I guess I was never sure why I liked this flick. It could be like Feardotcom and I was just in spectacle of the direction and the dreary scenes that the flaws became less prevelent.

Bruiser sure as Hell isn't good but the damn thing was fun for me.