The Reel Review
The director who brought us such controversial, sexually violent 1990s films as Basic Instinct and Showgirls is back, with the complex tale of a calculating, emotionally-distant businesswoman who, after being raped in her home, focuses her aggression towards men to discover the identity of her attacker. Isabelle Huppert’s Golden Globe winning performance as a feminist with an unemotional attitude towards her own rape is convincing, but Paul Verhoeven’s graphic, eye-rolling story is not a revenge tale, but rather, a series of outlandish psycho-sexual scenarios which will delight fans of uncomfortable moments, but is just too bizarre to be taken seriously, even as dark satire.