Good, well-directed French film in the vein of TAXI DRIVER, where an out-of-work, 50-year-old butcher slowly begins to lose control with the people and the world around him as he encounters one indignity after another. Unable to find a job no matter how hard he tries, having to contend with abuse from the fat and controlling dominant woman he lives with just because she has a few dollars, facing the burden of having fathered an illegitimate girl who now lives in a home and is unable to communicate, the tensions mount until the butcher is in danger of taking his frustrations out on himself and the miserable scum around him. The butcher's bizarre feelings and motivations are translated to us through what he's thinking, instead of relying on talk.

This is a brutal, honest, powerful movie that pulls no punches and draws the viewer into the mind of the man slowly going over the edge. Many people will be able to relate to feeling as lost and hopeless as he does, at least at some dark point in their lives. Here is a foreign film that succeeds in staying consistently interesting and captivating, despite its not having a plethora of special effects and pretty young teen stars (which so many recent American films seem to require). *** out of ****

Gaspar Noe has made two theatrical films, one is Irreversible which I've heard much about but yet to see (and due to my ironic curiosity now I may just see),and this one called I Stand Alone. With this film he tackles the man-going-mentally-down-the-tubes, but perhaps I missed something Noe was trying to grapple with. Actually, I don't think I did: Noe wants to make an iconoclastic vision of a man, here called just the Butcher, in a subjectively-told story of a man in a downward spiral of his life being just total s***, not finding a job in a proverbial wintry economic climate, and thinking over and over again about blowing people who raise their voices to him into smithereens. He did this, but he also created it in such a way that it is- and this is perhaps much too much praise for the filmmaker- inherently controversial as an "art" film. It will split audiences. This time I take the 'I hated it' route.

Here's why: for all of Noe's possible talents with a camera, in just setting up a shot or getting an actor to act this way or that, or writing the narration in such a way that it becomes a jambalaya of rambling and nihilism, his subject matter is repulsive without a single, slight portal for a viewer to come in on the proceedings. It isn't even that he didn't make a repulsive movie and didn't even attain his intended goals ala Meir Zarchi with I Spit on Your Grave. I'm sure he's proud of every *jolt* of a camera movement, every sudden and repetitive and redundant momentary lapse in a frame with a pounding beat of music, and for the icy performance from big lug Philipe Nahon. But unlike the most repeated comparison by other viewers to Taxi Driver, there's nothing else for the audience to latch on to aside from the droning, monotonous lava of dread and self/outward loathing of the Butcher. And after a short while, despite Noe's attempts at shock tactics... it gets boring.

So boring that, even with the risk of getting punched by the big lug-that-needs-a-hug, if one met him in the street the first reaction if tapped into his thoughts might be "waa, waa, waa!" Now, I should make it clear, this isn't to deride the plight of this Butcher and his hard-knock life since being an orphan and having a crappy wife etc etc. But there was not a moment that there was any connection with the Butcher, no real emotion aside from loathing the pretentious and obvious narration from Noe that attempts a kind of rigorous existential poetry but comes off as meandering. And then when Noe really attempts to make this a really savage ride into hell he revels in a cheap provocation method that at best is like low-rent Godard and at worst is just, well, tacky. Right before the much talked-about scene with Butcher's daughter occurs (won't spoil but it's a double twist that starts off as interesting and ends sloppily),we get a *Warning* to leave the theater before this next scene. Is this to tempt us, or even a threat? To really provoke us why even bother with the warning? If there's anything to learn from Bunuel it's that superb artistic shock is in the eye of the surprised.

As I said, this isn't exactly the worst film I've ever seen. There are moments that do disturb, but it's sometimes thanks merely to Nahon's stunted facial expressions. But despite, or perhaps in spite of, all its high-minded artistic and experimental aspirations, I never felt truly shaken or rattled by this man's depths of darkness and depravity. It's an accomplishment that may appeal to some looking for stone-cold depressing film-making, and has. I wish I could say the same, yet it's just bile upon narrative first-person bile strand that doesn't go anywhere aside from boredom and feeling exploited.

A brilliant, brutal, searingly intense, thought-provoking debut from Gaspar Noe.

The story of The Butcher, a working-class man whose entire life seems to be one of bad luck and bad breaks, some of which are his own doing. After trouble in Paris he moves north to Lille, hoping to start a new life. However, unfortunately for him, his luck doesn't change. With every bad break he becomes more bitter and looks for someone to blame - the people involved, society, the wealthy, the government, the country. With every disappointment his thoughts and intentions become darker and darker.

A brutal examination of a person on the fringes of society, someone who could easily exist and does exist. Quite Taxi Driver-like in that the central character sees the evils in the world, and wants to right them, though their anger is often misdirected, their methods unsound and themselves hardly bastions of morality.

The plot is largely driven by The Butcher's internal monologue, which is very direct, candid, stream-of-consciousness and uncensored and accurately displays exactly where the man is in his life. While much of his inner thoughts are the rantings of a bitter, dejected person, one can actually see how he could feel that way, and even agree with him in some respects.

Incredibly intense and director Gaspar Noe ramps up the intensity as the movie progresses. The tension in the last few scenes is off the charts.

The conclusion does a bit of the shine off the movie, as it turns what was a satisfactory, heart-warming conclusion into something a bit perverse and creepy. Ending the movie one scene earlier might have made for a better ending. However, in some ways, this is very consistent with the plot - our "hero" is certainly no saint.

Incredible movie, but not suitable for children, those faint of heart and the easily offended.