RAZORBACK

RAZORBACK

Razorback is essentially Australian for Jaws; a giant, dangerous, irrational creature that attacks humans on site with little or no motivation for doing so, all the while obscured by the theatrics of fog, light, and perspective. By no means a bad movie, and by no means a great one either; while the photography in this film is beautiful and oftentimes haunting the pacing is more erratic than a shithouse rat. More than once I found myself questioning motivation or felt rather jilted by the sudden change in scene and dialogue. It may have worked great for the director while firing off music videos but it makes for a somewhat unsettling movie going experience, not to mention a killer headache.

What Razorback lacks in ambience it makes up for in pure visual storytelling. There were several pieces in the film that had a haunting dreamlike quality to them, where reality and fantasy blending and coalesced into something that seemed completely out of place for a film about a giant roaming menace on trotters. In a matter of fact the threat of the giant beast pig seemed secondary to everything else happening on screen. We hardly see the aforementioned animal as most of the plot dances around the plight of several revolving characters, but never long enough to get a clear idea of their moral grounding or motivation. The thick Australian accent and rapid fire line reading did little to help either. The scenes that worked the best for me were those completely devoid of dialogue, as they managed to build some tension, but for the most part the film seemed very touch and go, trying to fit as many scenes as possible to keep the story moving within its two hour timeframe.

If some of the set pieces and dreamlike visual were the main attraction to the film then the offbeat redneck twins Benny and Dicko were the secondary pull for me. Their erratic behavior and junkyard dog mentality livened the proceedings of the film up a bit and provided much more of an anchor of despicability than the main monster did. For all intents and purposes they seemed to be the main villains of the movie, often crashing through scenes with crazy abandon and a punk-like anti-social attitude that would make most “normal” people more scared to transverse the outback than any pissed off hog would. Even their surroundings provided some of the cooler visuals of the movie; like the steamy, hostile meat packing plant and their makeshift underground lair. Needless to say I’d love to share a six pack of Fosters with these nut jobs while hunting down some kangaroos on safari. I’ve got good money that says they’d love listening to a bout of Whiplash and Vomitor.

All in all Razorback makes for an enjoyable ride. Monster romps don’t need too much flair to keep them pumping along and this flick has enough eccentricities to keep me coming back, even though I could of used more B-rated flavor like heavy doses of gore, boobs, and bad words to make the time pass this gets an easy ride for being so damn serious about the subject matter without transversing too far into the land of hokey (even though I’d have to say that my favorite scene was a humorous piece were one guy gets his living room ripped in half by the giant pig). Plus all those cool Australian backwoods locales make for an interesting sit through, so crack open some piss warm beer and lay on back. It’s fat berserker boar time!