this movie be a burn attack on the hollowness of many modern american value and particularly for young people try to find their way through high school and early adulthood . i doubt al qeda ( sp . ) could make a more blasting propaganda film than this about american value . but the problem with this movie be that it never let it character be human and it choose just to show the dark and most empty portrait possible . this movie will find an audience with people who be so postmodern a to be no longer capable of real feeling or tenderness . any sensitivity be something merely to mock . it will also find an audience with people who would rather savage than understand other people and pre judge them to something like sartre no exit or a neil labutte ( sp . ) movie . this be only truth as much a the view of an asshole take a crap be truth and but there be a whole lot more to human being than the cold and narrow character we see here . solondz character be all loser or player and when really we be all a little of both and not so much of either . perhaps the harsher reality be that our life be actually simple than this and less evil and less harsh and less sad . perhaps solondz want to demonize life when life be more of a purgatory than a hell . but either way and you would not see the kinder and more humane moment of life in this movie and and for that and it be a rather sad and simple and pathetic kind of story . not because of the character and because of the storyteller .