Damn if I didn't like this movie a whole lot. I found The Violent Kind, directed by The Butcher Brothers, on On Demand. Had never heard of it but thought why the hell not? That's never stopped me before, and I liked the title. Right off, I noticed the movie being very "coolified," which I'm a sucker for - when it's done right. It's quite the slippery slope. Rodriguez and Tarantino have it down to a fine art. Guy Ritchie comes to mind too. Others have tried but failed.
The movie almost did lose me at the beginning. It second opens with a cheesy, graphic sex scene, and I think, Okay so this is your draw card. It says, "This is a movie for MEN. MEN, are you watching this? Oh yeah!" But when a movie does that right off the bat, I start to worry that that's all it's got. But the acting was pretty good, the stylizing had me, and I found myself needing to see where it was going.
The Violent Kind, for me, was reminiscent of From Dusk Till Dawn, again with the style, also with the biker element, and with the fact that it took a bit of time for the movie to get into its horror/sci-fi aspect. Knowing that it was a horror movie but also knowing next to nothing about the plot had me on the edge of my seat waiting to see where the "scary" would come in to play. Similar to FDTD, the first part of the movie was nothing like the second half, although FDTD did have two directors with Tarantino directing the first half and Rodriguez getting the fun half with the vampires. You start to think, "How the hell is this going to turn around?"
Given that not knowing anything about the plot was a lot of what made the movie for me, I'm going to leave the plot entirely out of this review. Just know that the main "villain" played by Joe Egender had me at hello, the Butcher Brothers are a directing team to watch, and the ending was a bit lame (and the actress not good enough in her craft for that closeup) but didn't kill the delightful strangeness of this movie.
7.5 OUT OF TEN STARS.
