"Buzzsaw" Fails to Cut Deep
by J.T. Kolness
Dan Gilroy has worked in the business for decades. So far back, he was tapped to pen the final rewrite of the infamously never-made Superman Lives. After spending over a year of his life dedicated to that project, only for it to be cancelled, Gilroy built up frustration and finally resonance to move on to other things. During that time, he conceived the ideas that would eventually lead him to making his third directorial feature, Velvet Buzzsaw. Partially inspired by his complicated time working in the film business, you would imagine Gilroy, who delivered us a modern classic with his directorial debut Nightcrawler, would have displayed a little more effort in the writing department. Sure, nuggets of ideas remain in the final product of Velvet Buzzsaw, but the results of this long-conceived thriller feel ultimately half-baked.
Set in the ritzy world of art criticism, the film is about a variety of people working in the art industry (artists, critics, assistants, managers, etc) who become entangled with a mysterious set of paintings by an anonymous artist. Through supernatural forces, these paintings pick off these rich, self-centered, egomaniacs one by one, forcing them to pay for the sins they are currently committing. It's seemingly a fun premise, and utilizes the endlessly watchable Jake Gyllenhaal as our main central figure, a critic named Morf (yep) Vandewalt, who finds himself in the middle of a love affair. Unfortunately, given the talent on and offscreen, the film is ultimately a "buzzsaw" with an extremely dull chain. Yes, there's blood and gore, yes, there is some creepy imagery, but it's too few and far between.
Gilroy instead decides to focus moreso on the world of art criticism, which would be interesting if the characters were engaging. They can be filthy mean, despicable individuals, which should give Gilroy the opportunity to really play around in this eccentric setting, but he never lets us understand these people. They are hollow and shallow and lacking in genuine character development. They are just prey for these ghostly paintings and that's it, which only makes those brief scenes of characters getting what they deserve remotely worth watching. But even then, Gilroy will deliver an interesting death scenario, but cut away to the next scene before we can really relish the onscreen insanity. The only real concept that comes close to extreme uniqueness comes in the form of an art-piece robot that comes off "a little too human", but even that element is barely used.
It's a shame because these characters are played by a phenomenal cast of actors including Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Billy Magnussen, Zawe Ashton, Daveed Diggs, and previous Gilroy collaborator Rene Russo (who gets the most to do outside Gyllenhaal). But these actors are filling these roles with their own personalities, not with what's written on the page. Only Gyllenhaal gets a character that feels like a genuine creation, but even then, as our "protagonist", all Gyllenhaal is able to provide is a sassy, flamboyant attitude and to show a little skin. At least he knows what movie he's in, if only Gilroy knew what movie he could have had.
There is good, biting dialogue here, and Gilroy is able to capture some decent moments of tension, but the film never rises above its average death-trap marathon, which is actually done better in far-less prestige films such as Saw or Final Destination. Most of the film just feels flatlined from the start. Even the cinematography by the great Robert Elswit seems oddly average. It's a criminal movie sin to have a title as glorious as one "Velvet Buzzsaw" and not embrace its true absurdity to full capacity.
"Velvet Buzzsaw", a Netflix film, is rated R for violence, language, some sexuality/nudity and brief drug use. Running time: 113 minues. Two stars out of four.
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