"Cut! Cut! If you say 'owie' one more time, I'm walking off the set." Freddy vs. Jason (R, 97 min.) Wide release Lucia Lucia (La hija del canibal) (R, 110 min.) Village Square

Thursday, August 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: Good clean fun

Freddy vs. Jason celebrates wholesome, American slaughter

It's insidious. Our noble leader told Iraqis to "bring it on," and every day, American soldiers sacrifice their lives on Tikrit's mean streets. Yet all CNN ever shows is the occasional flag-draped coffin. Where are the dismembered bodies? The skulls sliced open by shrapnel? The carotids gushing patriotic, arterial red?

On Sept. 11, 2001, many citizens exercised their right to leap off tall buildings. But did those wimps Rather and Brokaw bring us artistic closeups of the resulting Jackson Pollock splatter effect on the WTC concrete? No. Just dull long shots of rising smoke and falling debris.

On April 20, 1999, did the "media" relay exciting footage of terrified teens, their breath labored as they cowered beneath Columbine library tables? No. Nothing but boring helicopter views from outside the school.

Clearly there's a liberal conspiracy afoot to stop us from sating our bloodlust. Thank God, then, for Hong Kong actionmeister Ronny Yu and his pals at New Line Cinema. Their Freddy vs. Jason is a non-stop gorefest, with wholesome Americans (Monica Keena, Kelly Rowland, Jason Ritter, Brendan Fletcher and Christopher Marquette) being stalked by those beloved icons, Krueger and Vorhees.

Eventually, Nightmare on Elm Street's razor-fingered ghoul (Robert Englund) and his Friday the 13th, hockey mask-wearing nemesis (Ken Kirzinger) engage in a bloody battle whose outcome never was in doubt--given the need to perpetuate this lucrative franchise.

All the gore is fake, of course. But that'll have to suffice until we can get Michael Savage and Ann Coulter into the White House and bring back balanced TV reporting. Just think. If O.J. had arranged a bidding war, we might've had exclusive footage of Ron and Nicole being hacked to death, in glorious slow-mo, from multiple camera angles.--Anthony Allison

ąBasta! Lucia Lucia tries too hard

You knew that, eventually, one of the American studios would buy the rights to one of Mexico's high-performing movies and attempt to connect it to the sleepers Y Tu Mama Tambien and Amores Perros. Sure enough, Fox Searchlight's slick trailer for Antonio Serrano's Lucia Lucia (La hija del canibal) claims the movie is the continuation of the "extraordinary new wave of Mexican cinema."

Lucia Lucia feels like a concerted effort to appeal to Spanish speakers and their international admirers. Serrano, a proven TV and film success, has adapted the popular Rosa Montero novel that shares this movie's Spanish name, starred by Cecilia Roth, the Argentine actress who carried 1999's Best Foreign Language Oscar winner All About My Mother, and featuring the big screen debut of Mexico's answer to Paul Robeson, scruffy Kuno Becker, who also seems primed to become the next Gael Garcia Bernal.

Latin culture overload aside, it feels more a convoluted multi-genre Hollywood knockoff--and another opportunity for Roth to go midlife crisis on us. This time, her character, Lucia, is using her deadbeat husband's kidnapping as a way to feel alive again, accompanied by two intriguing neighbors: widower Felix (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa), and young quote-flinger Adrian (Becker), both smitten by her, which occasionally makes for some threesome tension (not unlike Y Tu Mama). They help her seek out the bad guys, but Lucia doesn't quite know why she keeps sticking her nose where it shouldn't be. Does she really want her husband back, when she can't resist the seducing prowess of Adrian? Does stopping mean going back to a life she no longer wants? By the time she and the movie have found their groove, we've stopped caring.--Mike Prevatt