Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 5:3	Budget Medium

Bruiser is George Romeo's (Martin) attempt at something besides zombie movies. Produced by Canal+ and filmed in Canada, the film has a different look than more mainstream movies. I grew up on the Canadian border, before cable. I was only able to watch about six channels, two of which were in French. The Canadian government mandated that some large percentage of TV content had to be Canadian made. As a result there were tons of movies and shows that were made in Montreal. After you've seen a couple hundred of these, you can spot Canadian production values a mile away. Some odd combination of a slightly slow pace and a little bit of flatness to the accent just screams Canadian.

Bruiser is a slightly odd movie. Our hero, Henry Creedlow played by Jason Flemyng, is introduced to us while he is shaving and listening to a radio talk show. The caller is upset that no one cares about his problems and eventually shoots himself on the air. Henry has already drifted through a fantasy where he kills himself and he is shocked back to reality by the caller's suicide. We next meet his wife. Janine is sleeping as Henry looks at her wistfully. When he accidentally wakes her up, we discover that there are problems in the marriage. On the way to the train station Henry meets his stock broker and is discouraged by the less than expected returns on his investments. Once he gets to the office, things really go downhill. Turns out that his boss is an unrelenting asshole who abuses his employees. We also find out that Henry is in love with the boss's wife and we suspect that she feels the same. At a party Henry has a mask made of his face. The mask is pure white and featureless. He is told he needs to decorate it to describe his personality. Shortly after this he discovers that his wife is having an affair with his boss. Henry is clearly not having a good day.

Upon waking the next day, he discovers that his face has taken on the aspects of the mask, white and featureless. As he is wondering what he should do about this, the housekeeper comes in and thinking she is alone, steals some money out of his wallet. Henry snaps and kills her. It takes him a while to realize that what he did was not a fantasy but real. He goes on to kill most of the people that have screwed him over in the last little bit.

The basic story is great and the script has a lot of nice little nuances that really flesh out the characters. I love the way Henry nearly panics as he slowly understands that the housekeeper is dead. The mask is meant to portray Henry's unremarkable existence, and everyone, including his close friends, barely acknowledge his existence even when he is threatening their lives. However, the man must be making something like six figures if he can even hope to afford the house he is building. He works for a fashion magazine (the movie is named for the mag, Bruiser) which is a pretty tough job to get. While we never quite figure out what he does, he can't be quite the milktoast that he is shown to be. The second problem is that even though these people did bad things to him, none of them deserve to be killed. Quit the job, call the cops on the crooked stock broker and divorce the wife. If you have to kill people start with the boss. I know that he is supposed to be unlikable and all but seriously do we need to spend that much screen time with him? I probably could have forgiven all of this except for the ending. After killing the last of his abusers Henry's face returns to normal. Relieved to be back to normal, he walks away through the fog. His potential love interest talks to the cops and then also disappears into the fog. This is where the movie should have ended. But I guess George has just made too many zombie movies and couldn't leave well enough alone. We have one more scene of Henry at his new job and soon we hear his new boss and he sounds exactly the same as the old boss. Spouting the identical monologue from earlier in the movie, he vents some of his bile on Henry who just walks away. When the boss says "who do you think you are?", Henry turns around and his face has gone back to the mask.

In this one 45 second scene, George has ruined the entire movie. We might have been sympathetic and forgiven Henry for his actions except now it turns out that his true nature is a serial killer. This invalidates all of his previous actions. Those people weren't killed because they were assholes, they were killed because Henry is a murderer. In general I enjoyed the movie even if I did think that Henry's actions were a bit extreme. I don't mind shocking endings, but this was the wrong type of shock.

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