It took eight years for George Romero to put his next film together after The Dark Half, and it ended up going straight to video. That's just kind of sad, but the film itself is honestly just not very good. It's got an interesting idea and visual at its heart, but the storytelling is so loose and unfocused, missing pretty much every moment it should in order to work, that it honestly kind of feels like Romero just gave up at a certain point early in production. Like, he didn't film enough or, by the time he got to the editing bay, he was just cutting the film down to its shortest length possible to get some kind of release. It's got some effective moments and the broken thematics are interesting to a certain extent, though, so it's not a complete waste of time. That's something.

Henry (Jason Flemyng) works at the magazine Bruiser, owned by the outrageous Russian émigré Milo (Peter Stormare). Henry has a dissatisfied wife, Janine (Nina Garbiras), with whom he lives in an unfinished mansion that is getting no work done on it because Henry is constantly low on funds. His investments, managed by his friend Jimmy (Andrew Tarbet), never seem to pan out as well as he would hope. His progress in his career at Bruiser is being stymied, perhaps in no small part because he has a friendship with Milo's ex-wife Rosie (Leslie Hope). Janine is getting tired of the whole stalled upward momentum situation, and she decides to have an affair with Milo at a barbeque he organizes for his employees. At this barbeque, Rosie has everyone make molds of their faces and paint the subsequent masks made. Henry and Janine have a fight going back home, Henry goes to bed angry, and he wakes up with a white mask permanently plastered to his face. Well, it actually is his face since it bleeds when he cuts himself trying to take it off.

So, what's this all about? Well, there are some lines of dialogue here and there that attempt to explain it. The earliest is Henry saying to Janine that she stole his identity from him. The dramatic focus is that he's a nobody, and the mask is a visual representation of that nobody-ness. Essentially, as the film plays out (and especially once we get to the resolution), it feels like the mask, the central visual motif of the film, feels underthought out.

What it's all supposed to be about is this central character of Henry standing up for himself, in the end. However, that gets so murky with the amount of violence he commits. He kills a fair few people for a variety of reasons, and it never feels like the people he's killing have gone nearly far enough to deserve death. Essentially, this makes Henry the bad guy, but as the film goes on, Romero obviously wants us to sympathize with him. He's a tortured soul who's been beaten down by the world. Granted, I've never actually seen Falling Down, but I do know that Michael Douglas was confronted with the idea that he had become the bad guy through his wonton criminality. That realization never comes to Henry in Bruiser. In fact, I don't think the film realizes that he's become such a monster.

A great highlight is his first kill. He's just woken up, and the housecleaner comes in. We've never seen this woman before. She's not pre-established at all, not even in dialogue with other characters. She immediately starts stealing little things like some silver from a box and money from his pocket. Henry smashes her head in. Is this justified? Not really. Does the movie make him out to be a bad guy? In the moment, it's unclear, but as the film goes on, the housecleaner is never mentioned again. He's also never really made to pay for any of this. He honestly feels like the "understandable" bad guy, a guy driven to violence by bad things in his life but ultimately needs to be taken down because he's causing damage to people who don't deserve it.

So, this is a portrait of a beaten down man who turns bad. Fine. I guess. Except, I really don't think Romero realized what that was. I think he took it in a more generic horror direction of spooky looking man goes killing people. He has said that it's not really a horror film (I'd agree), but instead it's a portrait of a man. I get that, but he's so unlikeable and honestly not that interesting. The character work on Henry feels razor thin to support something like this. I actually didn't get the sense that he was terribly beaten down in the opening act. He's a bit dismissed by Milo, but he credits Milo for his career, which seems to imply that it's strong, and his wife is very good looking. It's only at the barbeque that things really seem to unravel.

Anyway, Henry works through the people who have wronged him, and it crescendos at a metal masquerade. This is probably the best the film is from a primarily surface point of view. It's got a lot of color, motion, and events as the police hunt down Henry while everyone is in a mask. Henry tracks down Milo to exact his final revenge. Rosie is in the center (another bit of underdeveloped stuff is some dialogue here and there implying that Rosie and Henry loved each other once, but it goes nowhere). It works from a visceral point of view, but it's still the finale of a confused, empty film about a man who should be viewed as a monster.

The central visual of Flemyng in that white mask is interesting. The kills are quite well done. The finale is rather grand in its busyness. However, it's confused and truncated narratively. It doesn't really work. It's hard to believe that this is the result of Romero's eight year period in the cinematic wilderness. Sure, he'd been shopping stuff around and trying to get stuff made for all of it, but this is what gets made? I really feel like something just fell apart during production or editing. Honestly, it deserved to go straight to video.

Synopsis: It is about a guy who works in a job with a crappy boss who is not good to anyone, a wife that cheats on him and a good friend that steals money from him. He start off imagining he kills people that treats him bad. You really feel this guy has some very big anger building up inside. Actually he feels that everybody around him treats him bad. He wakes up one day after a party, finding out the white mask he created on the party is stuck to his face. And the anger breaks loose.

Acting: Jason Flemyng did the best performance in this movie by far the way he change from miserable to anger is great. He have done a lot of movies in his career. To name a few like Lock, stock and two smoking barrels (1998), Snatch (2000), Transporter 2 (2005), Stardust (2007). Peter Stormare the well known Swedish actor. Also did a pretty good job in this movie as the very bad boss. Just did not care about anything. To name some of his big list of movies like Fargo (1996), The lost world: Jurassic park (1997), Hamilton (1998), Prison break the TV series (2005). He have also been voicing the mercenaries games. Leslie Hope did nothing big but a very decent job in this movie. She have also done her part in movies but nothing very big, maybe mostly known for her role in the TV series '24'. Nina Garbiras did nothing very special performance in this movie. Have done some roles outside of this one, mostly in TV series like Leap Years (2001), Boomtown (2002).

Cinematography: Most of the filming was shot in Toronto and Ontario, Canada. Was a good location to film this movie nothing to point out as bad about it. The setting was OK. Nothing big in the camera work but Romero is not known much for his camera work.

Make-up: In this category I usually point out costumes and makeup but in these kinds of movies it is better to just talk about makeup. The main thing here is the mask it is very well done actually. But now we talk about man behind the zombie genre the master of masks and make-up. So the mask here is awesome and it is mostly it to mention.

Music/Sound: The music here is great and Romero actually did make a video earlier in his career for the band who play in this film. So they made 2 original songs for him and played them in the party scene in this movie. That is pretty awesome. The sound mixing is forgettable but it fits in with the scenes pretty well. And makes a good tension for the movie.

Summary: We can start off saying this is George A. Romero's better works since the awesome zombie flicks he made. Like Night of the living dead (1968), Dawn of the dead (1978), Day of the dead (1985). I would not call this a major horror movie though. It is tipping more over to the thriller genre with horror elements in it. It is only one thing that made the rating from me this low and that is the way the movie progresses later on. I would have liked it to go in the same direction as it started off because that was really amazing. If I should point out some similar movies if you liked this one the first movie that comes to my mind is Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, it is very similar actually. If you are a Romero fan you should absolutely try this one out. If you like a good thriller I don't really know if I would recommend it to all but it is pretty good, and worth a watch.

George Romero's last completed film to date has its moments, but suffers from underdeveloped characters and themes, doesn't make any sense even on its own terms, and lacks punch. It almost feels as if at least half an hour had been cut from the finished product; at the same time, the party/concert that ends the film is one of the most pointlessly dragged-out sequences I've ever seen. Peter Stormare's awful performance sinks it further. (*1/2)