Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
old-dude
Just as I was going to bed this movie came on Showtime. It hooked me right from the beginning. That Robert Haley dude was scary man. There is just something utterly fascinating about gangster types who have no moral compass at all. This film captures that perfectly. You can tell it was low budget but it is NOT that obvious. Maybe like "El mariachi". Let's hope these guys can keep making movies. The only thing I did not like was we never saw the unblemished truth version of what really happened. I imagined that was coming and then the credits rolled. My feeling was that we would get a version from maybe a private eye or a gang rival who actually maybe watched it all from afar. You have no possible way of knowing what really happened. Yea, maybe that was the point especially with the opening quote but still... it is just a movie.
piverba
This is not a film to be forever written in the annals of cinematography but it is poignant tale of violence without glorification of the mob. If there is one distinctive character of this film it's it honesty. Yes, it's about cruelty, murder, vise of all kinds. It is suspenseful and unpredictable. All characters are killed, the assumptive protagonist is turned out to be a liar, similar to others, no better than the others, as it should and must be. He tells the story portraying him a reasonable person, even compassionate. Momentarily we may forget that he's an active participant of the mob, our minds are not ready to deal with complete negativity; we require a redeemer, someone positive, a counterweight to establish the equilibrium. Who triumphs? – yes, you guessed it – the boss - the most ruthless and unpretentious of them all. He's the arch-thug and does not make a secret of it. He can never be accused of being nice, he never thinks nice, nor acts nice, he does not need nor want anybody to think nice of him. He's honest. He rips out protagonist's tong because he would not tolerate lies and deceptions in his domain. This is fitting conclusion of a story of a mobster, who pretended to play the role of a 'good guy'.Often we are shown films, such as with Steven Seagal, where the protagonist, who demonstrates ruthlessness exceeding that of his opponents, somehow portraits as a positive character, avenging society. The reality is that this protagonist prevails because he was more ruthless than the 'bad guys'. We feel relieved that someone did this dirty job for us, or we feel, vicariously, to be this hero ourselves. Both feelings are deceptive – we are being manipulated to obtain inauthentic relief, like a junkie, offered a fix. Violence, if shown at all, need not to be cathartic, nor feel like pleasure, neither remembered as an agreeable experience. It should feels badly, for it is stupid and self-destructive activity, not to be indulged in.A better way to dispense with the story like this one is to pluck out the tong of the symbolic story tellers by not patronizing their films. In a way Jeff and Josh Crook did just that with regard to all this Mel Gibson's Hollywood trash. Their violence does not feel good – it feels ugly, pointless and dead; it has no future.
chicagopoetry
I'm surprised that The Level went straight to video because this is actually a very deep and thought provoking gore fest in the lines of Reservoir Dogs. The entire story is told in different versions by people who are being tortured to death. We don't know who to trust and just about everything portrayed ends up being a lie. There are some extremely brutal moments here. Apparently one scene was so gory they had to censor it because they pixelated it into blurriness as a guy was getting his head hacked off with a machete. The acting is decent and the plot is sound. It's as if you took the John Travolta and Lawrence Fishborn characters from Pulp Fiction and made an ultra-violent movie all about them. I don't know if this is a gangster movie or a horror movie. The line has really been blurred here. Fans of either genre should definitely check this one out.
Jaarus
MAY CONTAINS SPOILERSI suspect 'The Level' will get compared a lot to 'Reservoir Dogs' in reviews for three main reasons - I couldn't help making comparisons either... First reason is around the style of story telling. We join the story around three quarters of the way through and it uses character testimony to inform us, the viewer, how things got to that point. Eventually the story passes where we joined it, tying up all the loose ends as it does so. Second reason is its all about criminals not knowing who they can actually trust (they are all criminals after all) and backstabbing each other when put on the line.. no-one knows who to trust and you as the viewer aren't at all sure which story is the truth.And finally.... its violent. We aren't talking a non-stop gory bloodfest here... we are instead talking about realistic violence. Which is far more gut wrenching if you ask me (if anyone has watched a little known film called 'Savage Dad', starring Patrick Stewart...just think about the 'wrist' scene) This is definitely NOT one for the kids!! Final scene is a real 'muscles tightening as you watch it' scene.I wont go into the plot as the plot IS the film... but if you like Mob style thrillers then you will enjoy it - even if it is a bit slow at times.7 out of 10.
