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It's the rage (All the rage)

Threat advisory: Low - Low risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Helen Harding (Joan Allen) awakens in the middle of the night and ventures downstairs towards the unnerving scream of a gunshot. There, in the middle of the posh living room, her husband Warren (Jeff Daniels) stands over the body of an alleged intruder. It turns out that Warren has shot his business partner, who for some reason decided to enter their home, unannounced, in the middle of the night.

The burglar story doesn't go down so well with detectives Tyler (Robert Forster) and Agee (Bokeem Woodbine). Warren is a slimy guy, smug to the authorities and oozing paranoia over notions of his wife's unfaithfulness. But his slick lawyer Tim Sullivan (Andre Braugher) gets him off, and Warren returns to his perceived world of normalcy in which he is the master of his universe.

Still, Warren's actions have changed Helen's view of their relationship and her place in her husband's world, so she announces her intentions to leave him. Immediately, Warren threatens to hunt her down but Helen finds shelter and solace in the mysterious hi-tech compound of software tycoon Norton Morgan (Gary Sinise), a virtual reality and gadget-addicted geek who manages to combine the worst qualities of Bill Gates and the Peanuts pig pen. Helen replaces Morgan's doofus assistant Tennel (Josh Brolin) as personal assistant whose chief responsibility is to keep any and all information away from his eyes and ears.

Brolin leaves Morgan's employment to follow his true dream of working in the film business. He ends up working in a video store. There, he becomes infatuated with shoplifting punkette Anabelle Lee (Anna Paquin), whose psychotic brother Sidney (Giovanni Ribisi), uses his rare lucid hours between drug trips to unleash his rage at the local shooting parlour.

Lawyer Tim becomes infatuated with Anabelle, too, much to the chagrin of his lover, Chris (David Schwimmer), who has recently purchased his-and-his revolvers for protection. Tyler and Agee, still determined to bring Warren down, decide to bend the law in the name of greater good and track Warren's every move.

Persons of interest

Joan Allen .... Helen
Jeff Daniels .... Warren
Robert Forster .... Tyler
Andre Braugher .... Tim
Bokeem Woodbine .... Agee
Anna Paquin .... Annabel Lee
Wayne Morse .... Clerk
David Schwimmer .... Chris
Josh Brolin .... Tennel
Gary Sinise .... Morgan
January Jones .... Janice Taylor
Barb Wallace .... Diane
Kevin Crowley .... Ed
Robert Peters .... Phil
Giovanni Ribisi .... Sidney
Keith Reddin .... Screenwriter
James D Stern .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Studios and distributors:

Sony Pictures Releasing

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Guns are good.

It's the rage is one of those Six degrees of separation films where everyone knows someone who knows everyone else and they all meet up at some stage before the end. It's not as formal a plot structure as, say, Pulp fiction where every character passed the baton on to someone in the next scene (it's not an original device, by the way, it's based on rounds like Row, row, row your boat and has been used in theatre for several decades), it's more of a tangled web (see Time code for the ultimate in coalescing plotlines).

After that little treatise I will take a valium and calm down.

*Takes valium*

*Calms down*

There, that's better.

The trouble with It's the rage (a very good pun, by the way) is that it's too slow. Even for someone who's just had a valium. Chopping out 15 or 20 minutes would be just the bee's knees but that wouldn't leave much of a product to market. Perhaps James has told everyone to pull things back so that there's a contrast between your expectation of a gun flick and the reality. Perhaps he just doesn't get it. T h e s t o r y d r a g s . . . he should've watched Pups first (now there's an alert film about the the right to own, use and caress firearms).

Oh, well, there's no changing it now, so I will look at other aspects in the hope of finding something to rave about.

There's a televisual blandness that afflicts a lot of the scenes, from the script to the acting to the lighting. It's like watching the TV spin-off from a great movie and finding that no-one drinks, swears, does drugs or has sex any more. Gary Sinise's psycho geek is the very picture of cliché lunacy, from the bad glasses to the hopeless obsessions. Jeff Daniels is like a wooden doll being pulled around by an assistant director with a piece of string. David Schwimmer is so divorced from his character that he barely registers on the emulsion.

Wait, hang on... I was going to find something good to rave about. Hmmm... maybe there's nothing to rave about.

Now there's a point to think about. Maybe this movie isn't worth watching.