Part of you is rooting for this cocky American to lose more than a finger.HOSTEL: Presented by Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill, Vol.
Hernandez has been one of my favorite promising actors since he loved a druggy Kirsten Dunst in 2001's ''crazy/beautiful," but in ''Hostel" he's a pain, until the movie turns him into Sigourney Weaver.īy then it's too late. The trouble is that in Paxton we have a hero we don't like. That's only because, by that point, Roth has switched genres and started making an action thriller. The movie does get more involving in its latter half (the murderous street urchins are a delectable touch). ''Hostel" is more persuasive as a dark-dark comedy. It could benefit from the twisted moral outrage and dramatic irony of the ''Saw" pictures, which, unthinkably, attempt brief identifications with their torturer.
Even after an outré punch line is revealed, the film is neither shocking nor adequately terrifying. The problem is that the screenplay is scarcely developed enough to shed much light on anything. Acknowledging his Eastern god, Roth also tosses in a cameo from the ice-cool Japanese director Takashi Miike, whose psychotic ''Audition" (1999) is a deserved cult treasure. In that sense, Roth fancies himself an old-school American moviemaker in the Wes Craven or Tobe Hooper mold - a storyteller who happens to make films in which people are clawed and chainsawed. The director is confident enough to advance a story with his camera and his actors. ''Hostel" is straightforward and classic-looking. Roth seems to care enough about his movies to do a lot of his work on the set, not in the editing room, where most horror films are turned to gobbledygook in a last-ditch bid to drum up fright. The ''Tarantino presents" tag is meant to seduce a wider audience than saying, ''from the dude who brought you 'Cabin Fever.' " Yet it doesn't rightly distinguish its maker from the hackwork of ''They," ''Fear Dot Com," and ''Darkness Falls." Viewers expecting Tarantino's visual wit and cinematic verve are bound to feel rooked by Roth's gallows schlock. ''Hostel" is being sold as a Quentin Tarantino presentation, which seems a little disingenuous, even though it's true. Amid the howls of terror, bodies are impaled and digits cut. Guests are whisked off to Ye Olde Dreary Dungeon of Horrors. Paxton, Oli, and Josh check into a hostel near Bratislava, and needless to say, not everyone checks out. Ever eager for easy women, he heeds the advice of an Eastern European who promises a place in Slovakia where there's ample opportunity for sex. Intolerant and bullying, Paxton causes most of the trouble, and the movie indulges his chauvinism and casual homophobia. They befriend an Icelander named Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), insult the locals, get in fights, find hookers, and carry on with boorish joie de vivre. Written and directed by Eli Roth (''Cabin Fever"), the movie tells one of those nightmare-abroad tales, like ''An American Werewolf in London" or ''Eurotrip." Jocky and horny Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and bookish and virginal Josh (Derek Richardson) show up in Amsterdam and promptly hit the bong and cruise the nightclubs. Folks who live for the pull and snap of live flesh will have their share of sequences to cheer for in ''Hostel," the new horror flick about two American backpackers who wind up snared in a wild Slovakian torture ring.
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