Writer-director Eli Roth figured out how to fly under the radar of the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system so that Hostel does not have a X rating despite pushing the envelope so far beyond 8MM (1999) that spoilers are warranted. Now we know something about MPAA that questions the bureaucracy there: They want Hollywood to profit from a cult film that invites gang members to attend, complete with chains, leather, piercings, tattoos, and evil eyes to intimidate nongang members who want the vicarious feeling of being perceived as punks and ex-cons, along with others who just go along for the wild ride, tired of the tamer porn that MPAA will not allow. That Hostel would receive an R rating, the same as Mrs. Henderson Presents, speaks volumes about the raters at MPAA. But perhaps undercover police in attendance will arrest a few filmviewers attending the snuff flick who would otherwise have remained underground to hide their "Most Wanted" fame in the post office. That said, the film is about two ugly American college males on vacation in Europe, taking a summer break (one from law school, another from Ph.D. dissertation writing) to enjoy drugs and profanity while misogynistically dominating foreign-accented beauties, preferably at cut-rate prices. They begin in Amsterdam, where the sale of drugs is legal and women display their delicious attributes in full-length windows for a pretty penny. One night they run into Oli (played by Eythor Gudjonsson), an Icelander who generously pays so that they can enter a whorehouse warehouse to select sex partners. Oli and Paxton (played by Jay Hernandez) enter a dominatrix's room, whereas shy Josh (Derek Richardson) enters another room and then retreats to the street without a conquest. Because they return to their hostel after midnight, the doors are closed, so they climb up a fire escape to someone's room, where a woman is on top of a man with an onlooker who welcomes them. The onlooker suggests that they should go to Bratislava, Slovakia, for real action with beautiful girls at bargain prices. They do, meeting en route a middleaged dirty old Dutchman (played by Jan Vlasák) who also sings the praises of Bratislava. When the Dutchman makes a pass at Josh, the latter rebuffs him, so the Dutchman goes to another car of the train, destination Bratislava. Then the film departs from all reality. Instead of arriving at Bratislava's central station, they disembark outside town and take a taxi to what appears to be a much smaller town than Bratislava (actually a section of Prague, Czech Republic). Males and females share suites together at their Bratislava hostel, and their female suitemates lead them to a nudist spa where only twentysomethings abound. Oli and the ugly Americans have a good time with the vixens at the spa that afternoon, at a disco that night, and in the suite afterward. Josh discovers outside the disco that the streets of Bratislava have gangs of children who demand either bubblegum, money, or a pound of flesh. The following morning, Oli has disappeared without a trace. The next morning, Josh disappears. That leaves Paxton to hunt them down; a police officer (played by Miroslav Hanus) seems pessimistic, and Paxton does not go to the American Embassy in town (where he would be arrested for violating the Protect Act of 1993, which bans Americans from engaging in sex tourism), but one of the vixens is happy to lead Paxton to the "art gallery," where she says that they are located. After a long ride to a derelict building (a long-abandoned mental hospital in Prague) where gangster toughs are conversing outside, he asks exiting Takashi Miike (playing himself) what is inside, and the latter suggests that he should beware--of spending a lot of money. A total fool, he enters and soon ends up handcuffed to a chair in a torture chamber after being escorted past bloodied dead bodies, including those of Oli and Josh in separate rooms. The absurd story then permits him to make a miraculous escape, after half of a hand is severed, but not before meeting an American who has paid plenty to make his kill. Paxton indeed kills to get out of the building, but not without rescuing Kana, a Japanese damsel (played by non-Japanese Jennifer Lim) who was staying at the hostel. Kana's eye has just been gouged, so Paxton cuts out the eye to make her face appear less freakish. Instead of gradually bleeding to death, the script has the duo exit the snuff palace past the gangsters and their police buddy, get into a car that conveniently has keys in the ignition, and they go recklessly through town to the train station at the edge of town, although during the last yards of their journey they run on foot without spilling blood to the station platform. Seeing that her face in a mirror now looks like a war zone, however, Kana jumps in front of the approaching train. Next, Paxton boards and makes his way without a passport to Vienna, where he snuffs out the Dutchman, whose role in the flesh trade is now clear, in the otherwise unoccupied lavatory of the train station so that justice somehow will be served in a "Make my day!" manner without fear of retribution. Press notes say that the film was conceived after discovering an ad for $10,000 murder vacations on the Internet, but filmviewers are not told that. When Hostel reaches Slovakia, expect a declaration of war against Hollywood, which can now boast for the rest of 2006 of releasing the worst film of the year before the first week of the year has concluded. Presumably the film would have been classified as a gay SM film, and thus raise hackles within MPAA, so the writer had to insert a few female victims into the story to portray the grisly characters as equal opportunity torturers. MH
I
want to comment on this film
