Ryûhei Kitamura‘s No One Lives is trying so hard to be cool, it hurts.  It is a complete and utter wreck of a screenplay that sounds like it was written by an idiotic 16-year-old boy.  The acting is abysmal, and only made worse by the fact that there are real actors put side-by-side with amateur ones.  Kitamura’s earlier film, Versus, wasn’t a great, but it at least showed some kinetic energy.  However, that kind of slick movement, or any personality beyond a generic slasher, is completely absent from his new movie.  All it has to offer is gruesome kills, and not even particularly inventive ones at that.  But hey, the protagonist is a violent psychopath in a black trench coat, so I guess that means this movie has a personality.  It’s just a personality no one wants to be around.

When The Wire ended it was a bittersweet moment. For five seasons, The Wire showed what television could be, and that long form storytelling need not get lost in useless subplots, or characters added to reinvigorate a stale premise. Put simply, The Wire is the finest accomplishment the format has come to offer, and the only consolation was that the show never faltered, it never stopped being brilliant. Creators David Simon and Ed Burns had earned the right to fail, to take chances, to do whatever television presented them, and their follow up was the HBO miniseries Generation Kill. My review is after the jump: