Following the coal-black, broad satire of POSTAL and his nihilistic contribution to the post-SAW visceral horror stakes (SEED), Uwe Boll gives us his take on the FALLING DOWN notion of a guy who snaps and unleashes his pent-up demons on the public at large. Only this time it’s FALLING DOWN in the wake of Columbine, Dunblane and numerous other spree-shooting incidents ; grimly fascinating is the fact that this movie’s UK DVD release turned out to be one month after a taxi driver went postal in Cumbria. Also noteworthy is that RAMPAGE - an intense, powerful picture - represents the continued upswing in quality that Boll’s recent C.V. has enjoyed, and may well be his most accomplished picture to date.

   Brendan Fletcher is our anti-hero, a deeply troubled 23 year old mechanic who still lives with his parents (Matt Frewer, Linda Boyd) and finds himself relentlessly nagged by mom, dad and his boss. He eats at fast-food outlet Chicken Den and bemoans the terrible food and service, resigned to the fact that “this is America, it’s what we eat”. His best - and, it seems, only - buddy laments the state of the money-driven world but believes Fletcher to be all talk, no action. This changes when, after wigging out at a coffee bar because of too much foam in his beverage, Fletcher suits himself up in Kevlar body armor, seizes hold of a prodigious weapons cache and takes to the streets, indiscriminately wiping out anyone unfortunate to wander into his path, including cops.

   Even more so than his recent, impressive state-of-the-nation misanthropic epics, Boll’s latest is a confident assault on the senses, with deliberately abrasive use of sound and editing : the movie is a barrage of startling sound and images, with early flashes of horrors-to-come ultimately becoming intensely realized for Fletcher’s vividly dramatized rampage. From the very start, the movie unfolds against a horribly credible backdrop of constant scare-mongering and real nightmares : Fletcher works out while the media tells him to be afraid of global warming, the war in Iraq, deadly chemicals, Al Qaeda, the economy, serial killers, crime in general, et al.

   Shot verite style with overlapping dialogue and authentic performances - Fletcher is a compelling lead presence - the flick is also rich with dark irony : Fletcher’s parents congratulate him on finally having goals, unaware the “new direction” he’s decided to take to fulfill his life is to stage a massacre in the town centre. There’s a beguiling vein of very black humor running through his distressing rampage : note the delicious sequence at a bingo hall where he proves only a fleeting distraction, or the moment in which his Mom phones in the middle of mass-carnage.

   Fletcher effortlessly becomes part of the media scare-mongering he had earlier listened to after terrifying assaults on banks, restaurants and beauty parlors, and modern life is presented as a downward spiral, with his “mission” - his brand of “population control” - an inevitability of our culture. The ending is powerfully ironic, and technically RAMPAGE is first-rate. Chalk it up as another bleak surprise from the overly reviled filmmaker. As usual, actors from various other Boll joints appear, including regular Michael Pare as an ineffectual sheriff.