PARIAH
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Indican Pictures Director: Randolph Kret Writer: Randolph Kret Cast: Damon Jones, Dave Oren Ward, David Lee Wilson, Aimee Chaffin, Angela Jones
In Frank Loesser's musical "Most Happy Fella," a quartet of guys who are standing on the corner watching all the girls go by begin singing, "Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking." Good thing. Thoughts and fantasies of hate are far more common than physical displays of these emotions: feelings of racism and homophobia are probably more typical than we presume. Very fortunately, these feelings are physically acted upon in only a relatively small minority of cases. "Pariah" demonstrates some of these.
Randolph Kret's movie is thrown together helter-skelter, scenes popping up before our eyes without rhyme or reason, but the picture is so visceral, has no much damn frenetic energy, that it compels our attention. The performers are charged up throughout, giving us in the audience barely a moment to reflect on what's going on, but then again, the characters in this movie are probably clueless themselves about their motivations. They profess that they hate "niggers," "spics," "fags," "kikes," "pussies" and all the others in the country who are not exactly like them--and in fact each often appears to hate his fellow in this pathetic skinhead cult and, of course, himself as well. Ultimately, though, they get into daily fights not so much because they can't stand members of minority groups but because fighting is fun. Like the boxers in David Fincher's "Fight Club" who profess to dislike rampant consumerism and the feminization of the male sex in America, the reasons they give for confrontations are mere rationalizations. These are empty- headed, emotionally crippled individuals who would have to face their nothingness if they could not dominate those who were physically--but certainly not intellectually--weaker than they.
"Pariah" focuses particularly on Steve (Damon Jones), a formerly peaceable white guy who becomes a hater because he witnesses the rape and subsequent suicide of his black girl friend (Elexa Williams). Attacked by a band of skinheads who beat the stuffing out of him and force him to watch the gangbang, Steve becomes Dirty Harry, a one-man army who takes the law into his own hands by going underground, becoming a skinhead, and worming his way into the organization of riff-raff in a raffish section of Hollywood that seems to be inhabited by nobody from this planet. He seeks vengeance particularly against the person who led the attack, David Lee (David Lee Wilson) and the honcho of the gang, a large, well-built chap named Crew (David Oren Ward).
While the movie will inevitably be compared to "Fight Club," it shares a genre more with Stanley Kubrick's 1971 classic "A Clockwork Orange"--about a society in the not-too-distant future in which rape, torture and killing are everyday events and the law is nonexistent. While this movie in no way has Kubrick's style, it conveys the writer-director's view that though many of us normal people never see these Hitler youths close up, they are a dangerous force in America who are difficult to reckon with despite their recognizability. In fact in watching the endless beatings engaged in by Crew, David Lee, their simple-minded female groupies, and the counterattacks launched by gangs of young blacks and gays, we wonder why no one responsible for enforcing the law is around and why these easily identified skins never get picked up by the police.
Raldolph Kret does not motivate these sickos. Sure, in one case a young woman complains that his brother was killed by a black man and in yet another a dysfunctional father alternately throws the hoods out of his house and supplies them with hospitality. But he does not really delve into the psychology of these common criminals who have memorized gibberish from Nazi ideology but otherwise have no gray matter inside their glabrous craniums. "Pariah" is chock full of rape (the only way these guys can enjoy sex), killing, maiming and vulgar, racist language. The most interesting twist occurs when the undercover Steve is asked to prove his loyalty by "offing" a transvestite. Has Steve's hate become so intense that he has himself become like one of his mortal enemies?
Unrated. Running Time: 105 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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