five points i want to make

1) the best acting that jolie does is outside the screen (cf this months W magazine shot, which blends the motherhood, movie, irl, adultery, scandal and gossip angles all in one), her sexualised personae (ie her sheer fuckability) is almost impossible to screen in people who are obbsessed against an R movie--this movie plays that, and also reheterosexualises brad pitt--strangely enough the movies where hs is the closest to being a pure subject of gaze/desire is in context with other men (ie river runs thru it, legends of the fall, fight club, se7en--sidenote:can you imagine another actor who is so famous right now whos act has been mostly about seducing other men?). the other thing is that the gaze is more projected on pitt here then it is on jolie--or least eaually which is different then it usually is.

2) it conflates sex and violence--which is not unsual in american movies--but most american movies do one of two things 1) either treat this as sinful (ie movie of the week/perils of pauline women in danger) or treat it as a translating/replacment (ie guns as phallic play). This one actually talks about an apoclyptic sexualised fury that does not nessc. exist in many american movies.

3) on the same track--the idea that fucking can destroy, destroy literally the same, asethically secure suburbia--it is a coded reference to the recent crises in hetrosexual marriage? this can also be contained in the the chase scene, with the minivan, and the sqaublling and the amazing scene where the double doors seem to be useful (other movies with minivan joke: the last ice cube, several tom arnold comedies, beethoven, etc)--movies with minivans and car chases tend to put them in a question of domestic peril and not danger.

4) the most dangerous seen in the movie, where it is shot in the dark shadows of domestic melodrama, and it looks like domestic violence, like the video for where the thunder rolls by garth brooks--to suggest that marriage can exist in dangerous bdsm power games is radical in a 60 million dollar hollywood movie.

5) limans use of geopolical power as thriller, of memory and lacunae matched in a kick ass drama (the two burne movies) continues here, hes good at folding in. and its shot well, its shot wtih a pristineness, where the housing porn comes thru all sorts of way--look at how personae of the charachters, and the metapersonae of the actors (including their previous roles) connect to tradtionally ignored things like costume and set design (which critics only seem to pay attenion to in melodrama but maybe useful in other genres--what happens if we look at the politics of interior design in the james bond films rather then the politics of interior design in douglas sirk---this movie does that)