Black and blue

“Bruiser”

Starring Jason Flemyng, Nina Garbiras and Andrew Tarbet…

“Bruiser”

Starring Jason Flemyng, Nina Garbiras and Andrew Tarbet

Directed by George Romero

“Don’t disappoint me, Tom. I’ve been disappointed enough.”

These two simple sentences, uttered by the faceless Henry Creedlow (Jason Flemyng), sums up the core of “Bruiser.” The wimpy everyman is forced to take control of his life from the hands of the people around him.

Henry is a human doormat, walked on and over by his wife Janine (Nina Garbiras), his boss Milos (Peter Stormare) and his “best friend” James (Andrew Tarbet). He is virtually invisible to everyone around him, even those close to him. He never stands up for himself or for anything, choosing instead to live out violent fantasies in his head. Even his only defining characteristic, his face, is taken away when he wakes up one morning to find it replaced by a white, skin-tight, faceless mask. With his mask, Henry decides it’s time to take control of his life.

It would seem that the concept of the mask representing Henry’s faceless personality is too overt, despite its genuine creepiness and its pinhole eyes. But the mask depersonalizes the murders Henry commits, buffering his character and his actions, and allowing the audience to remain somewhat sympathetic to Henry’s plight.

The success of “Bruiser” lies in director George Romero’s ability to create and sustain this sense of sympathy. Romero accomplishes this feat through his meticulous and constant bombardment of slights on Henry, especially before he becomes faceless. It is so well done that when Henry finally realizes that he needs to murder to be noticed, it is easier to cheer for him than to be repulsed.

“Bruiser,” unfortunately, runs out of steam by the end, settling for a cliched closing. Everything up to the end keeps within the tradition of a smart thriller rather than a slasher movie. After Henry reaps his revenge, he escapes the law and starts anew, seemingly with a personality and backbone, making the mask unnecessary. Ending the film this way would have elicited some kind of social meaning. Everything the film works toward is destroyed when, in the last seconds, his mask returns in a malicious Michael Myers way.

This is the first film that Romero hasn’t shot at least part of in Pittsburgh. Thankfully, it works for the story because of the faceless exterior of the Ontario locations used for production, which parallel the themes of the movie.

It is unfortunate that the same lengths couldn’t have been utilized when working out the ending. If it had, “Bruiser” could have been a decent social critique instead of the mere entertaining thriller that it is.

-Dante A. Ciampaglia, staff writer