My review is certainly peremptory; some may even say it is downright arrogant. I will concede this point. But please know that I wrote it to be deliberately so.
Now, mine was one of the first reviews posted on amazon.com, and of the six subsequent reviewers to date, only one reviewer responded directly to me. I reproduced his review below mine.
First, my review:
Sadism, as the release of Hostel suggests, is the order of the day.
We need not, however, even examine, really, how or to what extent this film will offend middle-class sensibility; the individual as moral agent is a subject that had some time ago receded from serious consideration, dispatched thither by that many-tentacled monster our culture has become, in which, astonishingly, torture receives sententious treatment in popular media as a viable means of interrogation. In this era of absent absolutes, all human activity becomes equally meritorious because precisely none is--at least, that is, from the point of view of any reliable moral calculus. To judge one (negatively) is to oppress him usurpatiously, without license, because no one enjoys that God's-eye view where all contigent situational skirmishes resolve into a more comprehensively scrutable context.
No, I will not natter on about bourgeois morality and the assault from all quarters that it constantly suffers; to point this out is to say nothing new.
The arrival of Hostel, which I'm sure will, like the blood-laced pabulum it is, be lapped up with glee by the same Adderall-addled first-person-shooter-shooters whom it has been my tremendous misfortune to (attempt to) teach, is infelicitous for another reason: it contributes, at a time in which it has never been more dangerous to do so, to the inevitable desensitizing to sadistic brutality which occurs with every film and video game of this genre, where violence, if not represented in a humorous vein (See: just about every Quentin Tarantino film. Incidentally, Tarantino, like some infernal latter-day P. T. Barnum, grants his imprimatur to Hostel), is represented simply for its own sake--some clinical curiosity, epiphenomenal with drawing air in a human form, and nothing more.
Indeed, I have seen an earlier version of this film. It then bore the title, The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal.
The parallels of the story of Hostel, in which some American dunderheads embark on an ill-fated tour of hedonism in a former Soviet satellite state, to contemporary events are uncanny enough to make one wax conspiratorial. I need only cite "extraordinary rendition": diffuse weaselese for the surreptitous flouting of the protections of the Geneva Convention. To be extraordinarily rendered is, as I understand it, to be whisked away to some former Soviet satellite state in order to be interrogated clandestinely in a place where the Geneva Convention has about as much real moral traction as Poor Richard's Almanac has for the typical American today.
Makes you think, don't it?
While I am certainly open to arguments to the contrary, it is my conviction that, in foisting this squalid little piece of snuff on a (let's admit it) rather ignorant, impressionable, sycophantic mass audience, Quentin Tarantino and Hostel writer-director Eli Roth stand guilty of acting with a degree of social and political irresponsibility that, given the current climate of dirty war for dubious aims, can only be considered destructively un-American. They have cynically cashed in on what I do not doubt will be perceived in the future as a sad epoch of American cultural history in order be the on the vanguard of a sordid recrudescence of grand-guignol. They have seen to it that, when torture becomes art, art becomes torture.
...And decadent art, which Hostel, Artaudian in its pretensions but lacking the requisite intelligence, most certainly is, has historically been a sure symptom of an empire in collapse.
So enjoy your blood and circuses, unlettered plebes. Ignore the heat, and ignore that sound in the distance; it's only Nero tuning his violin.
Now, the reviewer who responds to my review. Pay special attention to his ad hominem attack, keeping in mind my remarks about Hostel's intended audience:
GREAT FUN HORROR MOVIE!, January 6, 2006
Reviewer: Doug Birtell; "doug e fresh" (pa) - See all my reviews
just like to start off by saying mr jack squint down there from nowhere usa needs to get his head out his @ss and back to reality. un-american? lol anything but. this is what america has become and if you don't like it then you should invest in a time machine to haul your lame @ss back to a decade where your not so offended and also stop trying to impress people with your language skills not to mention take up room for reviews on this site. that being said hostel is a horror fanatics wildest fantasy, a ton better then wolf creek. jay hernandez holds it down! there are plenty of great gruesome scenes in this flick. eli roth developed alot since cabin fever. don't want to spoil anything but i'll just say most of the great stuff happens while out of the torture chamber not in it and when hernandez frees himself from it he gets the much deserved pay back hes seeking. recommended.
Now perhaps you understand why I believe I am living in hell.
