Deceived by 7+ rating I started watching. After 15 minutes I still forced myself to keep watching. After 30 minutes I had seen nothing worth to see, wasted half an hour of my life. What a dull obnoxious movie. Even the camera work is irritating.

Firstly this is one of the best films of 2000-10 period, the film is in reverse order concerning its story, so the opening really is the ending of the film, and the ending is actually the start of the film, so please be aware when watching this film its in reverse order story wise and, its camera work is certainly one of the best ever produced, the sound work mirrors the camera work, and is very hypnotic, and is meant to create a state of nausea and anxiety, it is very gritty gay scene in france and its hyper realistic violence and rape scenes within this film, which very few people will enjoy actually watching it, because of that or the reverse order of the story, if your going to watch it only watch the first version of it. do not watch the Straight Cut version of the film that was made afterwards, because it tries to place things in the correct chronological order for the small brained people out there, which also simply removes the deeper level of the film, and once again it is not a film for everyone, why very few people will actually understand it or enjoy it, or even the deeper level its trying to show, concerning life. life is time and time destroys everything (Le temps détruit tout). And for fans of I Stand Alone, Butcher makes an appearance in the start, i would also recommended watching Enter the Void (2010) also excellent.

CinemaSerf

7.0/10

@Geronimo1967 • Dec 5, 2025 •7 months ago

Now depending on when you watched this film, you might notice that the original version and the more recent one are structured in an almost clockwise and anti-clockwise manner. In this version we work our way backwards from the frenetic activities of “Marcus” (Vincent Cassel) and his friend “Pierre” (Albert Dupontel) as they race round Paris in the early morning vengefully trying to track down a brute who gruesomely attacked his girlfriend “Alex” (Monica Bellucci) in a city underpass as she walked home. Auteur Gaspar Noé spares us little, visually or audibly, as the two men react with violent anger uncontrollably attempting to trace the culprit; nor is much left to our imagination during the assault itself which in many ways almost mitigates the behaviour of “Marcus” as his boundaries completely evaporate into a sea of fury. It’s a tale of revenge, but also of the futility of that revenge. Nothing can undo what has been done, even if the men they hire to help them identify this assailant deliver, this pair are going to have to live with this as best (or worst) they can. Cassel offers us something visceral with his performance here and that is well tempered by a Dupontel whose character (himself an ex-boyfriend of “Alex”) tries to curtail the worst excesses of his friend’s off-the-rails behaviour whilst coming to terms with his own grief. Creepily worthy of note, too, is the effort from the character committing not just one, but a whole series of heinous and demeaning offences on this defenceless woman and though this is most definitely not an easy film to watch, it’s a strangely compelling one that does invite us to consider just how approaches to vigilanteism might alter if this happened to someone we loved.