Robert Carlyle and Guy Pearce in "Ravenous."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we gave this film a: Stars: Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle Director: Antonia Bird Rated: R, with graphic violence, nudity and profanity Length: 110 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(March 19, 1999) -- "Ravenous" taps into the gross-out shock factor that inevitably springs from the sight of one human being devouring another.

What's surprising is just how far director Antonia Bird is willing to go in her graphic depiction of the way people die beforehand. The cleavers fly, the knives stab and the teeth gnash with alarmingly graphic results.

Working from Ted Griffin's script, what Bird has fashioned here is an Old West variation on the vampire movie. The cannibals in this film begin to develop a dependence on human flesh to keep them vital, much as Dracula's offspring required regular infusions of blood.

This all becomes apparent much later in the film, after several blood-spattered killings; those seem distinctly at odds with the madcap dark comedy promised by the film's trailers. In fact, much of this movie is a straight-up horror movie, of the cannibal sub-species.

Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is assigned to a remote Army outpost in Sierra Nevada, Calif., in 1847, after an act of cowardice during the Mexican-American War.

The fort he arrives at is hidden away in the mountains and has a skeleton garrison of fewer than 10, including Native American guides. It is, in short, a dead-end where the Army sends its screw-ups to keep them out of trouble.

The boring solitude of the posting is shattered by the arrival of a nearly frozen man named Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle). When they thaw him, he tells a tale of horrifying doings: of a wagon train trapped by weather in mountain caves for so long that they began eating their dead and then killing each other when they ran short of meat again.

He tells them that he was one of three people left alive; the other man, a crazed Army officer, was still back at the cave with the lone remaining woman. Boyd, his commanding officer Hart (Jeffrey Jones) and a couple more soldiers head off with Colqhoun to find the cave and save the woman.

But Colqhoun is not on the level and, before he knows it, Boyd finds his colleagues all dead and himself embattled by the deadly Colqhoun. Boyd retreats, nearly dying after falling off a mountain and is forced to eat a less-fortunate colleague to survive. He finally returns to the fort after healing, to find that he is the chief suspect in the death of everyone else.

What's worse, he has become a cannibal himself, in need of human flesh. But he can't bear the notion of killing another person and wants to be put out of his misery. To do so, however, will require killing off Colqhoun, who has other plans.

Bird is unafraid to get as in-your-face as possible with the violence in this film. Humans taken to the Darwinian extreme are not a pretty sight but Bird never averts her eyes.

At times, the film's over-the-top violence achieves a gross goofiness. More often, however, Bird and writer Griffin skip over the humor and go straight for the jugular. What's surprising is how much energy (and humor) Bird gets by taking each grisly sequence one step farther than you expect.

Pearce, so good as the straight arrow cop in "L.A. Confidential," brings a smoldering self-loathing to this role. As Boyd, he aptly captures the conflict in a man who hasn't the heart to be a soldier, let alone a practicing cannibal.

Robert Carlyle injects a sly sense of menace into Colqhoun, a dissembling, murderous villain with an edgy sense of humor like a cat toying with its food. The pair of them -- the brash Carlyle and the reticent Pearce -- seem to bring out the best in each other.

Horror can be inspired by fear or by disgust; "Ravenous" opts squarely for disgust. To enjoy it, you need an unquenchable desire to squirm.