Cheap Spun (Unrated Version) (DVD) (Jason Schwartzman, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Patrick Fugit, Mena Suvari) (Jonas Åkerlund) Price

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Customer Reviews of Spun (Unrated Version)

A Wakeup Call
A wide-awakeup call, in fact. About five days worth. That's the amount of 24 hour cycles, Ross, the central character spins through in this relentless movie. Yes, this film is derivative. Shades of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (the animation sequences, especially), David Lynch's Lost Highway (a repeated shot of the dark, empty highway ahead, illuminated only by the car's headlights), D.J. Caruso's The Salton Sea (also about tweakers, with Mickey Rourke here substituting for Vincent D'Onofrio as Mr. Space Cowboy, menace 2 society, honkeytonk hairtrigger), and Darren Aranofsky's cutting-edge, Requiem for a Dream (similar downward spiralling of characters and not too dissimilar an ending).

So why the five stars, you ask? Because this film, while borrowing heavily from its sources, is still entirely original and innovative. Swedish born director, Jonas Akerlund has taken his music video sensibility and "tweaked" it to an extreme, combining visual and aural sensations in entirely novel ways. The camera work must be seen to be believed. Reviewers who denigrate the script are missing the point. This movie is about the camera. This is not herky-jerky, cinema verite, hand held camera work we're talking about here. This is carefully story-boarded, minutely crafted creativity at play. There are shots that could only have occured to a director who is either as crazy as his characters are (or as drug addled) or to someone possessing something along the lines of cinematic genius. Maybe it's a combination of all these. As this is Akerlund's first foray into feature films, I guess we'll just have to wait for his next movie (Lords of Dogtown, in pre-production) to decide. Don't worry yourselves about from whom, or from what, Akerlund is borrowing. Real artists worth their salt openly acknowledge that they're only building on the works of those who have come before them. I have a sneaking suspicion that Akerlund might be an artist to reckon with in the future.

BEK

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Unoriginal, overdone, and S-L-O-W
I was visually nauseated throughout this film-yet sat through 75% of it because Mickey Rourke and Britney Murphy were interesting characters. Unfortunately, this film lost all credibility with me because it was trying way too hard to be "Requiem for a Dream".
I was irritated from the beginning with the obnoxious noises and constant close-ups. It had many well-known actors and actresses in it-but this did not make the film any more interesting. The storyline dragged on- and became incredibly uninteresting after about 25 minutes. My boyfriend asked me why I was still watching it. He had to leave the room b/c it was driving him nuts. As far as the director, he needs to find his own style.
Don't waste your time with this film.

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A weird and twisted but hilarious drug-movie!
The Swedish music-video director Jonas Åkerlund gives us a movie about drugs. It is heavily inspired by greater drug-movies like "Trainspotting" (1996) and "Requiem For A Dream" (2000). But unlike most of the drug-movies I've seen earlier, "Spun" has no moral or deep meaning and message, it's just a film made to entertain and make you laugh. And it SURE made ME laugh...

Just as I wrote in the first line...this film is about drugs. It's hard to find a real plot in this film. It's just about people doing drugs, especially Speed (the word "Spun" means to be affected by Speed), and the their messed-up lives and everyday situations, seen through drug-affection. But while "Spun" doesn't have a real story, it has a some other qualities to offer: funny and well-created characters, good actors, a good soundtrack and A LOT of funny scenes and situations (it is bizarre humor though, that may not be recommended for everyone).

The main character Ross (played by Jason Schwartzman) is mostly a "ordinary" drug-abuser trapped in the sick world of drugs. But the other characters are funny, interesting and original. And the actors gives us these unrealistic, and sometimes almost cartoon-like characters, through some good acting. Characters like Spider Mike, played by John Leguizamo, a man I usually hate to see on the screen, and Frisbee, played by Patrick Fugit are highlights. But the one I will be remembering is Mickey Rourke in his role as The Cook (the one who's cooking up all the drugs). I could try to describe him, but it would have taken up too much space. You just have to see him for yourself...funniest character and performance of the film. Brittany Murphy is not only good-looking in this film, she's doing a good performance as the stripper Nikki. And let's not forget about Peter Stormare and Alexis Arquette, who shows up as some weird characters in some of the craziest scenes in the whole film.

One thing that can be said about this film, is that it's weird. You can tell that Jonas Åkerlund is used to directing music-videos, because it may feel like a long music-video at times. And sometimes the film is so twisted that you just have to ask yourself "what the hell is going on on the screen??!!". To make this a "different" comedy, the director uses the style of fast-editing, experimental camera-work and the sometimes very shocking pictures, that was seen in Darren Aronofsky's drug-masterpiece "Requiem For A Dream" (2000). But the problem is that it's being over-used.

I want to use a little comparison to the British film "Human Traffic" (1999). When I saw "Human..." I felt like the film was trying as hard as it could, to be like Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting" (1996). It failed miserably, and in the end I thought it was a bad movie. Now, when I watched "Spun" I felt like it was trying to do the same thing with "Requiem...". It didn't fail the same way as "Human..." though, but it is not even close to being comparable with "Requiem For A Dream". However, "Spun" makes it up with all the humor, and the fact that it is more of the "mindless fun" kind of comedy, that "Human Traffic" wasn't. But as I mentioned earlier, I think the style of the film (which was perfectly used in "Requiem For A Dream") is over-used, and became trying as the film approached it's climax. Therefor, I doubt I will be watching it from beginning to end, one more time.

Overall, "Spun" was a VERY funny comedy, driven by it's well-created characters, to me. This is not humor that fits everyone though, and there will probably be someone (as always) that'll say that it's glorifying the use of drugs. I will recommend it though, if you want to take a trip to the miserable world of drugs, trough a different comedy