We are still reeling from the mass shooting of more than 50 innocent human beings at a concert in Las Vegas. Hollywood, while quick to celebrate gun violence in film after film, reducing it to almost cartoon or video game levels ( John Wick, anyone?), is curiously shy of tackling their national problem on screen. Sure, there have been several films on their national tragedy 9/11, but American films about white men buying guns with impunity and calmly killing their fellow citizens with them are thin on the ground.
While mainstream Hollywood may choose to acknowledge Ground Zero and ignore the ground reality of mass shootings, independent cinema is not so pusillanimous. Gus Van Zant’s chilling Elephant (2003) was based partly on the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year. However, members of the National Rifle Association of America, without a trace of irony (they wouldn’t know irony if it bit them in their ample posteriors) blamed Elephant and Ben Coccio’s Zero Day (2003) for being “training videos” on how to conduct school shootings.
Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), based on the book by Lionel Shriver, tries to explore the psychology of a young mass murderer. Influenced by bedtime tales of Robin Hood, Kevin’s weapon of choice is a bow and arrow. In Shawn Ku’s Beautiful Boy (2010), a couple on the verge of separation are sobered by the news that their 18-year-old son has committed a mass shooting of his classmates before taking his own life.
But, the perpetrator in Las Vegas wasn’t a schoolboy. He was a mature man. Capturing such people on screen is the speciality of German schlock purveyor, Uwe Boll. After an initial career making unwatchable big budget movies, he came into his own when he entered the independent arena and made unwatchable low budget movies. The jewel in this phase of his career that is germane to our rather uncomfortable topic is Rampage (2009). Set in small town Oregon, it follows Bill, a low-paid mechanic, whose frustrations boil over: he dons body armour, helmet and mask, and heads into the town centre armed to the teeth with guns, pistols and knives. In the ensuing shooting spree, he kills 93 people.
Ever the provocateur, Boll does not have Bill apprehended by the law at the end of the film. He simply disappears, leaving a video recording behind, thus leaving the doors open for the inevitable sequel. Unfortunately, the sequel did happen – Rampage: Capital Punishment (2014). Even worse, a threequel happened too – Rampage: President Down (2016). The fact that three films have been made on the nauseating subject of mass shooting sadly proves that there is a market out there for such effluvium. Indeed, the tagline for the 2009 Rampage is ‘Have you ever considered it?’
Regrettably, in America alone, many people have not only considered it, but also acted on it to deadly effect.
Back in 1993, many had hailed Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down , where Michael Douglas goes on an armed rampage across Los Angeles, as an effective portrayal of a man’s frustration. In today’s circumstances, one doubts the film would’ve received such a rapturous reception.
