Serkin is one of the only directors out there who dares to tell the truth. Anderson Unbound is amazing! The review by Steve George below will tell you everything you need to know about this wonder-full new director and this thought-full film. The story line of this quirky tour de force is simple enough. Anderson, a nebbish executive taking part in a conflict management seminar is sent out to practice what he has learned in the real world. Armed with his new knowledge of conciliation, he spies a couple of ruffians arguing in a park, and proceeds to intervene. The results are both comic and disturbing. The effect the film is likely to have on viewers, however, cannot be so easily encapsulated. The film's early scenes display a quirky sense of humour and invoke more than a few laughs, but as Anderson begins to practice his conflict management skills, Anderson Unbound enters much darker territory. The two ruffians are oblivious to all his efforts, and their conflict escalates steadily despite his repeated attempts at peacemaking. At first, the violence is comically slapstick - but there comes a point when all vestiges of humour slip away and film depicts one of the most brutally realistic scenes of physical violence that I have ever seen. I knew, watching this film, that it was all special effects, that the fight scene was carefully staged, and that nobody was really getting hurt, but by the midpoint of the film I had stopped laughing altogether was staring at the screen in amazement and horror. I can't remember a film where a beating was depicted so realistically, where each punch made me cringe. Though moments of humour still appear (rather, flaunt themselves) throughout the orgy of violence, I didn't quite know whether to laugh or to be even more horrified. One of the most powerful images in the film comes at the end, a profound contrast to the preceding violence - Anderson has returned to his seminar and finds himself facing a projected slide of himself with his wife and children. It is a moment of judgment. Their expressions of disappointment are indictments he cannot escape... and neither can we. Anderson Unbound rubs our faces in the kind of film violence we have come to accept as entertainment, and by bringing to it a veneer of disturbing realism, makes us question our own reactions to it. Sam Pekinpah would have loved this film. Steve George has published 14 horror and suspense novels under his own name and pseudonyms Valerie Stephens and Jack Ellis.
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