"If this movie gets too gross, we're leaving."

That's what I overheard a woman tell her son, who looked to be about 12 or 13, just before the start of a screening of Repo Men tonight.

What followed was, quite possibly, the most violent R-rated film I've ever seen - this thing makes Scarface seem like The Little Mermaid - and yet the mother and son remained in their seats, munching happily on their popcorn, bonding over a fun night out at the movies.

This, to me, proves two things:

1) Kids today have an infinitely higher tolerance for gore than I did (I was 13 when I went to see David Cronenberg's Shivers, for example, and my friends and I literally bolted out of the theater, wigged out of our minds, the first time the parasite throbbed within the dude's torso).

2) The Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board has become just as desensitized to violence as audiences.

I don't mean this as criticism: After a sluggish start, Repo Men finds its footing and becomes a rollicking, outrageous B-movie ride with all the gloss and sheen big-budget Hollywood can provide. I'm glad the members of the ratings board, whoever they are, appreciated the film's subtle tongue-in-cheek approach to violence and let it slide by.

I was just struck by how much the film gets away with, while Brian De Palma had to trim the motel room/chainsaw sequence in Scarface repeatedly in order to avoid an X rating. In Repo Men, that scene would qualify as boring character exposition.

I've never thought of myself as squeamish - quite the opposite - but eavesdropping on that mother-son conversation tonight, and then watching the movie that followed, made me feel like a bit of a wuss. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Comments

[Juan]

Yes younger people pretty much have a far bigger tolerance for voilence these days. I do. It's the video games I think. There is violence ing ames, that's so over the tope, so graphic, and so bloody, that no film even comes close. And young kids play these games. Take for instance, a game that came out today, which i bought: God of War 3. I played only 30 minutes of it, and in those 30 minutes, I ripped enemies in half, stomped thier heads into the ground, tore the intestines out of a minotaur, and finally gauged out another enemies eyeballs. Can any movie really compare to that? It's just not that shocking anymore. Especially if its done in an over the top way, like this Repo Men movie.

[can't fight this feeling anymore]

You forgot No. 3: A large percentage of parents are idiots. Like the couple who brought two little girls - I'm talking 5 and 7, maybe - to a preview of Watchmen, before which the promoters threw out blue condoms to the crowd. I don't know what exactly is wrong with people.

[Juan]

They are completely oblivious. I bet all they saw was a blue uy in the trailer and instantly thought it was a kiddie super hero flick.

When I saw Pans Labyrinth, this family came in with 3 small kids. All under 10 at least. They fell into a very uncomfortable hushed silence after the captain smashes that one guy's face in with a wine bottle. Idiots.