"MAKES SCARFACE SEEM LIKE THE LITTLE MERMAID"
The Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez shared an interesting story on his blog last week about seeing the new film Repo Men and overhearing a mother tell her son just before the start, "If this movie gets too gross, we're leaving." Rodriguez' blog post continued:What followed was, quite possibly, the most violent R-rated film I've ever seen - this thing makes Scarface seem like The Little Mermaid - and yet the mother and son remained in their seats, munching happily on their popcorn, bonding over a fun night out at the movies.
Rodriguez surmises that kids today have "an infinitely higher tolerance for gore" than he did in his youth, and also that "the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board has become just as desensitized to violence as audiences." Rodriguez stresses that he doesn't state this as a criticism of the film itself...
I was just struck by how much the film gets away with, while Brian De Palma had to trim the motel room/chainsaw sequence in Scarface repeatedly in order to avoid an X rating. In Repo Men, that scene would qualify as boring character exposition.I've never thought of myself as squeamish - quite the opposite - but eavesdropping on that mother-son conversation tonight, and then watching the movie that followed, made me feel like a bit of a wuss. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
Posted by Geoff
at 1:15 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 1:15 PM CDT
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Updated: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 1:15 PM CDT
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