Film: Carnage

GENRE: Comedy/Drama
RATING: 14A for langauge
RUNTIME: 1 hour and 16 minutes
STARRING: Jodie Foster (Panic Room) John C Reilly (Chicago)
Kate Winslet (Titanic) Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)
DIRECTOR: Roman Polanski (The Pianist, Chinatown)
WRITER: Yasmina Reza (God of Carnage - play)
PLOT: Two pairs of parents have a meeting after their sons are involved in a fight which leads to an evening of childishness and chaos.

FIVE OBSERVATIONS:
1 This film is truly a showcase for the four actors involved; they get the opportunity to show off their comedy chops and overact the emotional stuff. The best of bunch, in my opinion, is Christoph Waltz who eventually embraces the chaos as his cell phone goes off repeatedly.
2 There are moments in the film when the one couple is almost out the door and then get sucked back in. It didn’t track for me, I would have just left. I don’t know if this is in the original play script or not, but it seemed a little too convenient for the story.
3 The film is 76 minutes long. Each minute is filled with uncomfortable tension. Thank goodness it wasn’t three hours.
4 Reza’s dialogue is fantastic. I love some of Jodie Foster’s word choices and how each word only drags the meeting out longer. Beautifully frustrating.
5 The vomiting looked real. Seeing people vomit makes me want to vomit. Not a good thing. Feeling queasy just writing it. Gotta go.

RECOMMENDATION: Wait for the DVD
UPCOMING REVIEWS: The Descendants