I remember this coming out a few months after Saw. Saw was a brilliant film, so I hear all of this hype, and it sounded like they would do more torture, it would be gorier, and I remember being legitimately pumped to see this film. Also, Tarantino’s name was attached to this. How could this be bad? Greg Nicotero worked on this as well.
We start off with bloody tools, like scissors, blood going down a drainage gate, and a door slams shut. Good start.
Then we meet 3 fucking irritating, abrasive guys: Paxton, Josh, and Oli. Oli is the least offensive. Americans in Amsterdam to go smoke weed. Josh has a fanny pack, Mick Foley would be proud. Oli is already nailing a girl. I enjoyed the badass bouncer who tossed Paxton and Josh out. Hmmm, a horror movie where I hate the characters. Hey, a boob. Time for the guys to get pussy. This seems way more logical to me. They are in a brothel. Josh doesn’t want a hot prostitute.2nd set of tits. Oli seems to be the best out of the group. Ohhhh, 3rd girl’s tits, she’s my new fav, she’s blond. So some dudes let them up as their hostel had locked them out. Alex is the main dude that invites them up. He wants to hook them up with bitches. Alex says to go to a Hostel because most guys are dead due to war, and due to their accent. He seems legit.
So our boys are on a train. This Dutch businessman sits down with them. The Dutch guy tells the guys that the girl will treat them well. I enjoy this guy’s philosophy on eating. Hahaha, he just put his hand on Josh’s knee, and Josh flipped out and scared the poor guy away. They are now in Slovakia I believe. The town is pretty nice looking. They get to the hostel.
Pulp Fiction is on TV. Lots of chicks……lots. They have female roommates, and I saw side boob, oh, there’s a full boob. Wow, just got up 7. We meet Natalya and Svetlana, they are the roommates, who are in a sauna and topless. They go to a party and Svetlana slips the boys some drugs. Oli says that he is the king of the swing. Josh doesn’t like girls smoking, and Natalya is a smoker, and that’s the one trying to pick him up. I’m on his side. He has asthma. He steps outside and there’s a bunch of kids trying to get money from Josh. The Dutch Businessman comes and saves the day. Josh buys him a drink and puts his hand on his knee. Dutch guy has a unique tattoo. Josh may or may not be gay. Up in the room, Paxton is with Svetlana, and she has a sweet ass, Josh is with Natalya, and she is stacked. Oli is with some girl, I forgot her name. The girls are riding the guys and they look at one another.
The next morning, no sign of Oli or the girls. Oli supposedly checked out in the morning. Paxton likes to say gay a lot. Oh, there are our lovely ladies, they are riding off. So an Asian girl who is friends with the Asian girl that Oli is with (Kana and Yuki not sure which is which), shows Paxton a text from her friend that says Sayonara. The guys are in town, and the kids ask for change again. They see Oli and chase after him and he goes to “Museum Tortury”. I do love the ticket guillotine. I forgot all about that. The guy they are chasing is not Oli. He has the same jacket as Oli. Well, that solves that mystery.
Oli sends them a text saying “I Go Home” and we see Ollie is beheaded, and this dude is heading to the Asian girl’s chamber next and about to snip one of her toes off. Kana is the one at the Hostel with the boys, so Yuki is the one with Oli. Josh is rude and blows off the hot chicks, and Paxton tries to smooth shit over. He tells Josh that they can either worry about a guy that they don’t know too well who may have left them, or get laid tonight and bounce tomorrow. Always go for the pussy when you are backpacking, right?
At the disco, Josh thinks that he sees Oli, and isn’t feeling well. Natalya offered to go back with him, and he doesn’t. I really dislike both dudes. Josh looks like hell. The lady that works at the hostel leads him up to his room, and some dude stares at him laying down. Paxton is lucky, gets the chicks. Some dude watches Paxton as he gets up to go to the bathroom, and looks at the girls who give him a knowing looking. He goes in a room, but it’s not the bathroom, and he can’t get out. He sits down, and now he is sick and passing out. So ends the boobs portion of the film. I hope you will now sit back and enjoy the torture aspect.
Somebody wakes up in a room, much like where Yuki was, and there are a bunch of surgical tools on a tray near him. It’s Josh in there, and a dude comes in with the surgical mask and an apron. Josh is handcuffed, as are his legs. The guy takes a drill and goes through Josh’s left thigh. It’s the Dutch Businessman. Good for him. Dutch says that he couldn’t become a surgeon because of his shaky hands, so he became a businessman. Josh wants to go. Dutch cut his Achilles and unlocks the handcuffs and opens the door telling him that he’s free to go. Josh offers to pay him, and Dutch says that he’s actually the one paying them. Dun dun dun.
Paxton wakes up, and according to the guy at the desk of the hostel, and he says that Paxton already checked out as did Kana. Paxton goes up to his room, we get to see Svetlana’s very nude body as she and Natalya were getting dressed. Awesome. They want to see him later. He is outside and sees Svetlana ride off in a taxi. Paxton notices the backdrop of Oli’s pic, and the kids run by and steal his phone. He gets one and starts choking the boy out but lets him go. So he goes to the police.
Paxton goes out wandering, looking around at the locals. He goes into a building, there are 2 pictures of nude chicks, so that is 9. He is in a bar and finds the 2 girls. They are with the dude that gave them the look at the disco. Pax is losing patience and asks where his friends are. She says that they are at the art exhibit. He wants to know where it is, and Svetlana isn’t going, but the other 2 will. She wants a bag of candy, a large bag. Good for her. They go to where Pax saw like in the background of Oli’s pic. There are a bunch of dudes in the parking lot. He sees an Asian dude leaving and he asks him how it is in there, and the Asian tells him to be careful because you can spend all of your money in there. Why was that important? Because that was Takashi Miike!!! He is quite the renowned director for this sort of sub-genre in Japan. He has done some interesting things, probably best known for Audition.
The guy tells him that for him, it’s free to enter. Natalya leads him to this door, and to see this place, fucking A. Natalya laughs at him for being so serious. He walks the hall, and he sees Dutch doing surgery on Josh’s chest. Natalya says that she got lots of money for him, and that makes him her bitch. I like that line a lot. We see other rooms of people getting beaten, cut, sliced, everything. That is probably the high point of this film. Pax is now handcuffed to the chair. One of the big bulky dudes bring a middle-aged man in, proves that he is an American, and this guy is geared up, ready to do some work.
He grabs a big pair of scissors and scares Pax with them. Ahh, the feeling of power for this little man. Now he has a garden rake and hits Pax in the chest a couple of times. Pax can speak German, so he pleads with this dude. This guy is pissed, slaps him, and walks away. He gets the big guy, and he puts a ball gag in Pax’s mouth. Thank you. German gets the chainsaw, and he takes the gag off Paxton, Paxton is puking, and now is missing 2 of his fingers. This broke Paxton’s arms free. German goes to charge Pax with the chainsaw, slips on the blood, cuts himself, and Pax shoots German in the head. The guard guy comes in and Pax shoots him as well. Pax picks up his fingers, put on the apron and a sweet helmet, and has a machete. 3 guys walk down the hall. He goes in a room with some bodies, there was a bare bloody boob, I’m counting it. Up to 10. Pax hides underneath her body, pretending to be dead and is getting carted off. We see people cleaning the bloody rooms.
The cart guy’s outfit is fucking great by the way. We end up in Josh’s room, and he’s all sewn up and the cart guy is now hacking up bodies into smaller bits. This guy is just a huge hoss. He gathers another body, cuts away. He dumps the parts into the big over/furnace. Pax knocks out hoss. This escape plan will work out great. Pax rides the elevators, ends up in the locker room I believe, and he has a big ass hammer. He sees that a cop is there when he looked out the window. He gets dressed in a nice suit, puts on a glove. The guards are aware at this point. Pax finds a wallet, with money and the business card. It says “Elite Hunting” and on the back, it has prices: $5,000 for Russian, $10,000 for European, and $25,000 for American. Wait….isn’t Russia part of Europe? Oh well. It’s their business. An American comes in, with the butcher attire, and asks Pax how he looks. This guy is one of the stars in Suits on USA. Neat. He wants to know how it is, our guy is like, for this money, it better be good. This guy paid $50,000 for a special order for a girl. This guy is hilarious. He also has the tattoo. Now he wants to figure out whether to do it quick or slow. This guy is PUMPED!
Pax finally gets out of there, but getting out of this compound with everybody lurking may prove difficult. He finds a car with the key in it but hears a girl screaming in pain, so like a dumbass, he comes back in to be a white knight. Fucking Americans. It’s our guy with a blow torch to Kana’s face. Her right eye is hanging out. He shoots the torturer, and then grabs scissors and snips the eye from the optic nerve I believe. My dumbass may be wrong on that. Oh, and yellow stuff oozes out. Why yellow? That can’t be right, can it? They make it to a car, and the guards are radioing, and the chase is on.
It’s 10 KM to the train station. He goes down an alley or street, and it’s blocked by a van. The guy moves it, and there he sees them: Natalya, Svetlana, and fucking Oli. What a tweest! He drives into all 3, Natalya survived but got hit by the pursuing car. Now Pax is getting stopped by the gang of boys, so he gives them candy. They block the guys chasing and throws rocks at these guy’s heads, and kill them, all for candy. Sweet. Pax is driving, and they are at a police roadblock. One guy is pulled out of a vehicle and beaten, so Pax wants to go a different route, but can’t so they take off on foot to the train station. Some of the “bad guys” are there on the lookout and talking to a cop. Kana finally sees a reflection of herself and is horrified. Poor girl. Pax tries getting her to hide with him, but she is just walking slowly on a mission. She jumps and dives into an oncoming train. Cool, how you feeling Pax? You wasted your good getaway for her to do that. He gets on a train and goes for a ride.
He then hears Dutch giving a similar speech to the one he gave on the train with the guy earlier. Pax follows him when he gets off the train. And he stalks, and he stalks, and he keeps stalking. Dutch goes to the bathroom, and Pax follows and closes the door. Dutch is sitting on the toilet when the business card is slid under. He goes to grab it and gets 2 of his fingers chopped off. Pax then puts Dutch’s head in the toilet, lefts his head up and slits his throat. He gets back on the train.
End film
Yeah, it wasn’t nearly as torturous as I was led to believe. I still feel underwhelmed by it. The first 40 minutes only serve to show us Dutch, Oli, and the connections to the girls. I guess this film could have been accomplished in 30 minutes in my mind. Pax could have ridden the train, met Dutch, been seduced, drugged, end up in torture room, escape, run over the girls and Oli, and kill Dutch. That could have been done in 30 minutes, no more than 45, and served the same purpose. So for me personally, I have to consider a myriad of things in a rating. It had lots of tits, so that is a big plus. It did have lots of gore, BUT simultaneously, based on what I had heard and how it been hyped up, this was incredibly underwhelming for gore. The story, in it’s simplest form, is not a bad one. My biggest issue is the length that they dragged it out. Just inane to drag it out that long just to be considered a feature-length. I’m probably never going to see this movie again. I watched it once when it came out, and again just now to review it. So that puts it under a 5.0. I think 4.5 is a reasonable score for it. It’s one of the better under 5.0’s that I have reviewed. That’s something at least.
Final rating: 4.5
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