Stars: Joan Allen, Andre Braugher, James Brolin, Jeff Daniels, Robert Forster

Director: James D. Stern

Summary: The lives of several people become intertwined after a man shoots his wife's lover but he says he was protecting her from an intruder...

Stern's directorial debut explores issues of violence in American society through three intricately connected stories concerning the ubiquitousness of hand guns. Seven strangers (Allen, Daniels, Sinise, Braugher, Forster, Schwimmer, Brolin, Paquin, Ribisi), must confront deep currents of rage, fear and injustice when a gunshot brings their lives together for a series of unexpected--alternately frightening and funny--scenarios. Based upon Reddin's (THE ALARMIST) stage play.

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Mixing a superb cast with a serious salting of dark humour "gun culture" comedy It's The Rageis that rare thing, a genuinely outstanding film which went straight-to-video. Like Magnolia(1999) it makes coincidence a virtue in telling the stories of a group of disparate characters, and how their lives are entwined and sometimes ended because of America's obsession with firearms. When Jeff Daniels shoots his business partner, his wife, Joan Allen, leaves for a job with a software billionaire, Gary Sinise, and the film expands to encompass brother and sister punks (Giovanni Ribisi and Anna Paquin), a video store assistant, a pair of detectives and a gay couple. Adapted from his own play, Keith Reddin ensures the script remains pointed, while Sinise delivers a wonderful performance of supreme eccentricity recalling Peter Seller's Dr Strangelove. Indeed, there is much akin to Kubrick's tense, pitch-black humour in this anti-gun parable, while in various ways, from the central Daniels/Allen couple to the sardonic detachment of the music to Paquin's "almost-relationship" with an older man It's the Rageparallels the contemporaneous American Beauty(1999). It's actually the more powerful film, and though made for cable deserved all the praise it received on its festival screenings.

On the DVD: The trailer doesn't capture the spirit of the film at all, while the 13-minute making-of documentary is routine promotional material. The commentary by first time film director (but veteran stage director) James D. Stern is exceptionally good, both enthusiastic and packed with information; the fact that It's The Ragereally bites can almost certainly be attributed to Stern's college roommate being shot dead. The sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 and while this isn't the sort of film to show-off a sound system,it's atmospheric and the diverse music score becomes almost a character in itself. The anamorphically enhanced 1.77-1 image is good but a little grainy and shows occasional compression artifacting. --Gary S Dalkin

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Behind The Scenes Featurette, Directors Commentary, Filmographies, Theatrical Trailer, Interactive Menus
Subtitles:	Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
Year:	2000
Release Date:	February 7, 2005
Runtime:	95 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C 823 268 1
Keywords:	Comedy, General, Rage, All, It's
Genre:	Comedy