Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

‘Postal’ is largely recognized as Maverick director Uwe Boll’s best movie. Personally I would hold up his Vietnam war flick ‘Tunnel Rats’ against ‘Postal’ as Mr. Boll’s best but when talking ‘Uwe Boll’ and ‘Best’ it’s all relative because the man is pretty much held up as the worst movie director ever by an awful lot of people who watch movies. While I’m not of these mean people, some of the criticism is justified as my man has made some really, really awful films. Just about a month a go I saw Mr. Boll’s apocalyptic biblical film ‘The Final Storm’ which was terrible. Simply terrible. But hot off the heels of ‘The Final Storm’… so hot of the heels it would almost seem that the man was shooting both movies at the same time… we have Mr. Boll’s latest movie ‘Rampage’. Rampage wasn’t just a good movie by Uwe Boll standards but it was a good movie by almost any standard that I choose to recognize.

The world, as we know it, is a mess. This isn’t any future world we’re talking about but the world that we live in right here and now. People are callous, shallow, insensitive and greedy. The media fuels this behavior with their slanted news reports and emphasis on consumerism and there are just far too many of us on the rock of the planet earth. Living in this muck is young Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher). Bill looks like you’re typical twenty something slacker, aimless, dead end job and living at home with parents who would like nothing better than to see him move out on his own, but not so fast my friends. Through flash forwards that cut into Bill’s seemingly mundane existence we observe the carnage he is reaping on his little neighborhood but what exactly has led to this eventual mayhem?

Bill has a best friend in Evan (Shaun Sipos) who is far more vocal and public about the problems that plague the planet right now, but Bill challenges Evan as to what he’s going to actually do about it. He’s all talk and no action according to Bill.

Bill, on the other hand, is a man of action. One fateful day Bill grabs his collection of cleverly accumulated automatic weapons and body armor, loads up, drives to a local

shopping district and rains hell. Bill will kill, kill and kill some more. That guy who didn’t know how to make a decent frappuccino? He’s dead now. That chick who was giving bad service at the Chicken Den? She didn’t make it. But those were specific targets. Generally Bill is just walking around town randomly murdering people. But this is no murder / suicide mission because young Bill has a plan. Far be it for me to spoil Bill’s plan before you get a chance to observe it for yourself.

I’ve said this before and I like to thinks it is true, but I truly believe I have the ability to discard some guys last work and only judge the value of the current work by the same person by only witnessing what it is at hand. So despite the fact that Boll’s last flick, ‘The Final Storm’, was just awful it didn’t matter in relation to this one, and lo and behold it didn’t.

With ‘Rampage’ Boll has crafted a very interesting film. It’s violent… beyond belief actually… and this isn’t cartoon violence but true to life authentically articulated violence which has repercussions and consequences. It’s almost as if Boll had just seen the Michael Ruppert interview documentary ‘Collapse’, listened to my man’s proclamations about where we are headed as a people due to our various irresponsible natures and made himself a movie out of one possible scenario of these irresponsible lives of ours.

Driving this film is a cool understated performance of Brendan Fletcher who at no point in this movie presents his character as crazy or irrational or zealous. He goes about this business of his very matter of factly which makes his character all the more chilling. To Boll’s credit, despite the fact that Bill shakes out to be about as villainous a character as characters come, he’s never presented as neither a villain nor a hero… just a disaffected, detached young man with a plan.

Now about this plan of Bill’s. Is Bill moralizing about over population, greed, and gluttony or Bill just like those he’s moralizing against and trying get paid? It’s that message, whatever you get out of it, that is strewn into this chaotic story that makes it even more compelling to watch.

So if you can, ignore the Bloodrayne’s and the Alone in the Dark’s and all those other awful videogame adaptations… note that this movie did come off a lot like a third person shooter… see what you can get out of Uwe Boll’s violent and fascinating film ‘Rampage’. But don’t worry, my man’s got a third ‘Bloodrayne’ on the horizon which should set everything right in the world again. Not that I think that movie’s going to be terrible or anything.