Ruthless people. bone In those years, there was not even a hint of Ruthless People, except “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and Larry Cohen was already annealing at the highest level. Shooting a simple and structurally heavy story about a strange African-American invading the ugly idyll of an apparently prosperous American family, Cohen uses all the elements so boldly that even the well-known minimalism due to a modest budget is invisible. This is manifested both in the very figure of Bone - a certain McGuffin, and in completely unexpectedly appearing erotic scenes and confessions.
Here, just imagine the viewer, to which a kind big African-American on the screen declares that he plans to kill and rape a lady right now on the screen? Of course, if something like this happened, the film would be a brutal tragedy (incidentally reinforced by the theme of racial intolerance). And Larry Cohen’s irony is beyond doubt from the very beginning. Therefore, the viewer relaxes, realizing that nothing like this can happen. Only now, when Cohen amplifies the multi-level arrhythmic psychological sexual scene, it becomes clear that predictability is not to be expected. “Bone” is the point of contact between the Real and the Desirable, which allows you to throw out all the most secret instinctive moments. The aesthetic coordinates of the film are contained in the middle between Russ Meyer’s paintings, Bergman’s Persona and Haneke’s Funny Games. So unexpected and impudent that it is plausible. However, the main advantage of the tape in another. Larry Cohen breaks tolerant cliches while remaining ironic. As if Chekhov traveled to America in the early 70s and briefly sketched his "postcards from the edge of the abyss." Plunging us into a world of cruelty, he miraculously managed to minimize this cruelty in his film.
8 out of 10