God Told Me To
This is a really interesting film and a great premise but its pacing is all off.
The premise is that a series of seemingly normal people with no connection to one another begin to go on a killing spree and when the police arrive and ask why they did it they always say, "God told me to." Unfortunately, we are really only shown two of the killers (one of whom is Andy Kaufman as a police office who starts to shoot people while marching in a parade with dozens of other police officers. "God told me to" is his only line). Once that happens the film goes off in an odd direction which I found a little too cryptic and unresolved for its own good.
If it could have stayed with the police office, our hero, as he tried to figure things out a bit more before going into the weirdness it might have worked better. Or if it were done a bit better. Maybe I missed it but at one point near the end the police officer says something about him being special and I was like, "he is?" I just thought that he was a random cop assigned to the case but apparently he was special. Maybe making that clearer would have been more effective. There's also a subplot about his estranged wife and his girlfriend that seems as if it could have been eliminated although I admit in hindsight there is at least one bit of information that comes out about the cop that does indicate something about his specialness. I think that could have been revealed without the complication of the girlfriend and the added scenes with her that distracted from the more interesting murderers.
That's not to say that there aren't some good parts. There are quite a few. The beginning is solid and two other scenes stick out. The cop goes to talk to a man who killed his wife and child(ren? I can't remember). It is really eerie to see the guy so calmly and dispassionately talk about shooting his wife and then trying to talk his daughter out of a locked room so he can kill her too. Then there is also a scene, and again, perhaps I wasn't paying attention, where you think the person is talking about one guy but then you realize the person is talking about someone else entirely which was pretty good as well. The film is certainly worth a watch though
four thumbs up
remake this movie
so it is more like Se7en
then it would kick ass
