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Release Date: Oct 16, 1998; Rated: R; Genres: Action/Adventure, Crime; With: Joe Carnahan
F
By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

There's a certain breed of title that's a dead giveaway. I thought Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was as mannered and synthetic as a testosterone yarn could get, but now even that has been surpassed. Blood Guts Bullets & Octane may just be the worst movie ever made about cool-jerk white guys who stand around offices and bars spitting out firepower and attitude in toxic doses. In this case, the annoying coolios are a couple of lemon-lot used-car salesmen who jabber on like human ticker-tape machines, lacerating each other, and the audience, with a spew of sub-Mamet/sub-Tarantino/sub-Andrew Dice Clay gibberish that is eyelid-dropping in its monotony.

Written, directed, and edited by Joe Carnahan, who also plays one of the blowhards, the movie was shot for $7,300, but this feat of thriftiness hardly makes the onslaught of indie-hipster cliches any easier to bear. Men in string ties. Vintage autos. Guns cocked in fetishized close-up. Severed limbs. Black-and-white shock-cut flashbacks. Bundles of cash referred to as Ben Franklins. Title cards that say things like ''The Big Buy-Out'' and ''Double Barreled Doomsday.'' The movie is a double-barreled disaster. F


Posted Apr 16, 1999
 

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