By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Goran Dukic
Starring: Patrick Fugit | Shannyn Sossamon | Shea Whigham
Country: united_states
Year: 2007
Running time: 91
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477139/
Jeff says: “The place you go after you commit suicide resembles one of the seedier neighborhoods of Los Angeles. You might think you’re still living on earth, except there are no stars, nobody ever smiles, and your friend’s car has a black hole under the passenger seat. This is where Zia (Patrick Fugit) finds himself after cutting his wrists during a fit of despondency over a lost girlfriend. When an old friend shows up and reports she also has ‘offed’ herself, Zia convinces his Russian friend, Eugene (Shea Whigham, channeling Eugene Hutz out of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, and hey, that’s Gogol Bordello on the soundtrack), who owns the car, to go out looking for her. Along the way, they pick up Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon, channeling Sam from GARDEN STATE), who claims to have been sent here by mistake. She’s looking for the people in charge so she can arrange to be sent back. Throughout the road trip that follows, across a vast and scrubby wasteland, they meet any number of eccentric characters, many of them displaying the wounds they inflicted on themselves to end their lives.
“In places the movie is really funny. It has a good, if limited, soundtrack. The characters are sympathetic. Tom Waits is always fun to see. The storyline is a little disjoint, though. For example, we see in flashback an apparently truly felt love between Zia and his girlfriend with (unless I missed something) no explanation as to why she left him, until the movie drops in a short and unexpected subplot towards the end that is not completely realized, seeming there only to explain why she left him. Despite it dark subject matter, Wristcutters is, paradoxically, a pleasant romantic comedy with which to while away 90 minutes of your time. I give it 3 cats.
“WRISTCUTTERS won the John C. Schweiger Audience Award for Best Dramatic Feature at the Ashland (Oregon) Independent Film Festival”