Mixing a superb cast with a serious salting of dark humour "gun culture" comedy It's The Rage is that rare thing, a genuinely outstanding film which went straight-to-video. Like Magnolia (1999) it makes coincidence a virtue in telling the stories of a group of disparate characters, and how their lives are entwined and sometimes ended because of America's obsession with firearms. When Jeff Daniels shoots his business partner, his wife, Joan Allen, leaves for a job with a software billionaire, Gary Sinise, and the film expands to encompass brother and sister punks (Giovanni Ribisi and Anna Paquin), a video store assistant, a pair of detectives and a gay couple. Adapted from his own play, Keith Reddin ensures the script remains pointed, while Sinise delivers a wonderful performance of supreme eccentricity recalling Peter Seller's Dr Strangelove. Indeed, there is much akin to Kubrick's tense, pitch-black humour in this anti-gun parable, while in various ways, from the central Daniels/Allen couple to the sardonic detachment of the music to Paquin's "almost-relationship" with an older man It's the Rage parallels the contemporaneous American Beauty (1999). It's actually the more powerful film, and though made for cable deserved all the praise it received on its festival screenings. On the DVD: The trailer doesn't capture the spirit of the film at all, while the 13-minute making-of documentary is routine promotional material. The commentary by first time film director (but veteran stage director) James D. Stern is exceptionally good, both enthusiastic and packed with information; the fact that It's The Rage really bites can almost certainly be attributed to Stern's college roommate being shot dead. The sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 and while this isn't the sort of film to show-off a sound system,it's atmospheric and the diverse music score becomes almost a character in itself. The anamorphically enhanced 1.77-1 image is good but a little grainy and shows occasional compression artifacting. --Gary S Dalkin
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