A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu.
18 Feb Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Counted Only Two
I guess this was inevitable. I haven’t yet seen the latest Tarantino faux western, but chose to see this instead. Roughly speaking, it is what used to be called a spoof, before referencing, extending and adding a meta level became permissible.
What impresses me about this is the risk of the filmmaker, because this is about as close to the line you can get, the line between deep engagement with meta-layer shifting and fatuousness. I shifted back and forth during the watching itself, and you may as well, before post-film deciding on its merit.
If you have not seen it, the idea is familiar: a screenwriter writes a film that unrolls with him, some friends and invented-made-real characters in it. What’s novel these days is how deeply these overlap, with in-story references to the writing process. There were six of these techniques on display here.
The one to look out for is the inner and parallel stories from the psychopaths as those stories overlap, merge and drive the ‘main’ story. Very clever.
(The original IMDB comment was deleted.)
Posted in 2023
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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