Bruiser (2000)
(In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) Acclaimed directors can be justifiably proud of their best-known work, but they usually have an entire body of work to consider. The fun begins when you get into the completion game of watching movies because they’re directed by a Known Name, and make your way to those lesser-known works. George A. Romeo is best known for his zombie movies (something that would come to define and take over his career, especially in the last decade of his life), but thirteen of his nineteen films are not “of the Dead” (including Juice on the Loose, a 1974 documentary about then-football player O. J. Simpson?!?). Bruiser was the last of those. It’s… not that good. The premise does have a kick to it, as a put-down milquetoast man suddenly acquires/imagines a mask that allows him to unleash his inner violent fantasies and goes on a killing spree against the bullies in his life. There’s some psychological depth to the dissociation mechanism that would allow such a thing to happen, and the ambiguity about whether the mask is evil or merely a pretext. But Romero wasn’t interested in such subtleties. What starts Bruiser on the wrong foot is the caricatural depiction of the protagonist’s terrible life, with an abusive boss, a best friend who defrauds him, an openly contemptuous wife (who’s openly carrying an affair with his boss and his best friend), a maid who steals from him… it gets to be laughable, but it’s the foundation on which everything is built. Violent fantasy sequences become real murders and the film is off to some predictable business, although the ironic finale (which disposes of the mask until it’s needed again) is better than average. It’s not a terrible film, and a cast headlined by Jason Flemyng (as protagonist) and Peter Stormare (as deliciously evil boss) does make it work. But compared to the potential of its premise, the film ends up short of its ambitions and turns out to be a relatively ordinary entry. Romero wasn’t infallible—something made even more apparent when he followed Bruiser with three more “of the Dead” movies with diminishing returns.