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轉一個amazon上的評論

By Chris Pandolfi (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

"Pathology" is advertised as a medical crime drama, but let's not kid ourselves--it's an honest to goodness gore-fest, about one baby step away from trashy, campy horror films like "Re-Animator." This film revels in its tastelessness, so much so that I think it prides itself on being just shy of unwatchable. To give you an idea of what I mean, let's examine the opening shots: through a camcorder, we see interns using cadavers to reenact the famous orgasm sequence from "When Harry Met Sally." Soon after, a student ruptures another cadaver's intestinal tract, and he's so repulsed by it that he vomits into the open body. You don't experience this level of badness everyday. Not even the disgusting "Re-Animator" went that far, and that's probably because its gore was nothing more than an inside joke, one we could easily laugh at.

In the case of "Pathology," the explicit gore loses all its campy appeal because of the unlikable main characters, whose perversions are so over the top that murder is tame in comparison. A few of the characters have loud, animalistic sex at the scene of the crime; others save it for the autopsy room, and it's there that one of the female leads involves acupuncture needles and a scalpel. This is the kind of material you want to laugh at, maybe even try to laugh at, but ultimately don't laugh at because you're far too distracted by how revolting it is. Then again, if you have high tolerance for the sight of dissected dead bodies, and if you see the humor in throwing an organ at someone in protest, then you just might get your money's worth out of this film. It would also help to have a super strong suspension of disbelief.

The story proper begins when Dr. Ted Grey (Milo Ventimiglia) joins one of the nation's most prestigious pathology programs, led by Dr. Quentin Morris (John de Lancie). Rather than bonding with his fellow interns, he immediately makes enemies, most notably Dr. Jake Gallo (Michael Weston); when Morris tells Grey that Gallo worked abroad in a relief effort, he responds with one of the film's most unbelievable lines: "A bleeding heart--I cut one in half this morning." The friction between him and Grey is shared among the other interns, who see Grey as an intruder in their midst. Then one night, at the local bar, one of them asks, "If you could murder anyone and get away with it, who would it be?" Grey responds with superior scorn, believing that we kill people because we're no better than animals.

This is when Gallo involves Grey in a game the interns all play. After one of them commits murder, the others must examine the body and determine the exact cause of death. Some of these deaths are creative; one man is given a can of liquid nitrogen to inhale while another is injected with a lethal dose of barbiturates while still in his hospital bed. I don't understand how they could get away with any of this, but never mind. The interns inspect the bodies after hours in a medical theater, and they enhance the experience by smoking a crack pipe and drinking. One of them--Juliette Bath (Lauren Lee 史密斯)--is a psychotic, sadomasochistic nymphomaniac who lets herself run wild during these meetings. She appears to be Gallo's girlfriend but willingly makes advances on anyone, man or woman.

Naturally, she and Grey have been getting to know each other, and this is bad because Grey's loving fiancée, Gwen (Alyssa Milano), is ready to move into the city with him, away from her father's luxurious estate. At this point, Grey understands that he somehow has to escape the game. But that won't be easy since Gallo, who's rapidly losing control, won't let Grey call a time out on the game; in his view, Grey is just as much a monster as he is, and as such, he should appreciate the work Gallo has been putting into his victims. Someone with Grey's qualifications should be able to determine the cause of death, even if it was very well executed (no pun intended).

Does this sound like a movie you'd enjoy watching? I'm sure the actors had a lot of fun during the filming of "Pathology" because they got to play with stage blood and fake organs, and who wouldn't have fun doing that? But there does come a point when enough is enough. The filmmakers never saw that point coming; they kept going further and further, as if they wanted to make the audience suffer along with the characters. You watch this film feeling various degrees of shock, not the least of which is disgust at the gross-out visuals. There's also disbelief over how inappropriately over the top the story is, especially since it makes use of an original idea. This movie is not routinely bad--you don't care about the character development or the length or the pacing. It's bad at a new level, one that makes you wonder what will happen next since pretty much anything is possible in a story like this.

I can't place this film in terms of finding an audience; crime drama-enthusiasts will hate it because it goes way too far, horror enthusiasts will hate it because it doesn't go far enough, and comic lovers will hate it because the sense of humor isn't relatable. It's really nothing more than a sickening piece of exploitation, like an underground film you dare yourself to watch and then feel dirty about afterwards. I've already made comparisons to "Re-Animator," but that doesn't means it's on the same page with "Pathology": the former is about bringing the dead back to life; the latter is about murder and mental reversions. Which seems better suited for lingering shots of cadavers being split open with medical loppers? If I were you, I wouldn't choose "Pathology" as the answer.   舉報