Bruiser
USA/France 2000. Director: George A. Romero
Cast: Jason Flemyng, Leslie Hope, Peter Stormare, Tom Atkins

When Harry wakes up one morning and looks in the mirror he finds that his face have been erased. In it's place there is now a white mask. After all the years of being an oppressed office worker, a betrayed husband and a general nobody without any real personality, Harry have finally lost also his identity. At first he is confused but soon he becomes intrigued. He now have the opportunity to reconstruct his identity from scratch. Better yet, he also have the opportunity to stand up against all who have mistreated him all of his miserable life and get back at them viciously, starting with the wife's damn dog.

Bruiser only partly show the ability of director George Romero, equally often it's woefully evident that Pittsburg's finest hadn't made any film in eight years prior to this. The Romero of old days would not have made such an unsure film as this. The film starts brilliantly, however, and the first third of the movie have all the trademarks (taut and methodical editing, thought-provoking script etc) of a Romero in a good and restrained form. He takes an interesting and fantastic premise, yet he doesn't overdo it. Harry just wakes up one day with a blank face and we have to accept that, no explanations offered. So far, so good. However, vital parts of Romero's script is also unnecessarily preposterous and when the plot thickens it becomes confusing. Harry may wake up with a blank face but it doesn't really change his identity. He's still the same old Harry, only with no face. It seem like it's all in his head, a sense of identity rather than any actual physical, but that's not explained nor explored. Perhaps Romero should have skipped the mask totally, but then there's the question of why doing evil deeds will help Harry get his face and identity back. Not to forget the many relations between people that are very scantily explained. Predictable enough Bruiser falls completely apart in the last thirty minutes and turns into tired formulaic slasher territory complete with an awful ending.

The acting is always as good as it gets, though, as Jason Flemyng is very good in the lead. The supportive acting is better than usual as well. Especially Leslie Hope (from TV's 24) is good as Harry's only friend and Tom Atkins (Maniac Cop) is funny as the cop on his track. Even the horrendously overacting Peter Stormare as Harry's mad cocaine-snorting boss is a joy, even if he tend to flash his johnson at every given opportunity quoting lines like "I'll show you balls!". For the fans Bruiser is also full of references to classics by fellow horror directors (the second killing here is a direct wink to the first killing in Suspiria etc). All expectations and shortcomings aside, Bruiser is still a fairly entertaining horror-thriller from one of the genre's greatest directors. But he definitely need to work on his image.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.