There are some movies that demand attention, no matter what you may think of them. Straw Dogs, The Terminator, Robocop, Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers, A Simple Plan, City of God, Fargo, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, and Big Bad Wolves. As you can see from the movie poster, Quentin Tarantino hailed Big Bad Wolves the best film of 2013, and it's no wonder. The Israeli gem is quite the diamond in the rough. I like to describe it as Reservoir Dogs without the happy ending. Those of you that know the story know what I mean by that.
The plot is actually fairly simple. It starts with a man being brutally assaulted by cops who think he is a serial child killer. Their beating on this man is surreptiously recorded and put on You Tube which makes them have to free the killer. Not long after, the killer strikes again. Unfortunately for him, the girl's father is an old special ops guy who ran operations in Lebanon. He picks a deserted house, and with the help of one of the disgraced cops, takes the suspect to this house and systematically tortures the guy until he tells them the truth. But like all movies like this, complications arise with often hilarious and/or gruesome results.
The reason Tarantino likes this, I assume, is not really the story, but the telling of the story. As most Tarantino fans know, his stories are never orthodox either in their subject matter or telling. Grisly stories are nothing new, but to tell that story with aplomb and flourish without degrading into camp is a hard and fine line. Big Bad Wolves does this with great results. It is at times serious, tense and nail biting, but at others funny and unexpected. But the movie never swerves from its emotional core, about a very despicable man and the lengths one may go to in order to avenge a wrong. This movie is fresh, original, and I look forward to other outings by its writer and director, because if this is what I can expect anytime from them, a new master has joined the ranks. Rarely have I felt this way about a director the first time I saw them. It is nice to have a bloody good time sometimes.
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