Well, since the movie is a spin on "Rigoletto" the tragic clown, you strongly suspect that "Rick" is going to cause someone decent to be extinguished. After about 15-minutes it's fairly certain that the daughter, Eve will be the unfortunate one - because she is the only gentle character in the movie! And since she is also the only person that Rick cares about and conspires to protect, her fate is sealed (the Rigoletto duality).The movie is both entertaining and outrageous. The "morbid ending" isn't to be taken seriously (Rick's grief is brief - in the movie), because that is the whole point of a Rigoletto-style comedy, tragedy. No time for tear jerking - the movie ends with Rick just sort of throwing up his hands in a "why me" gesture, cognizant of his loss and also that he has a lot of explaining to do.Agnes Bruckner (Eve) and Bill Pullman (Rick) give excellent performances - with a very believable father-daughter relationship, as well as interactions with the other characters. The boss played by Aaron Stanford had to love his role as the young weasel:)

This film is pointless, for many reasons. Not the least of which is that it's a bad bastardization of Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'Amuse (and Verdi's Rigoletto).It gets off to an intriguing start, though. Meet Rick (Bill Pullman) – the office jerk. He's a fairly unlikable guy, but that's because his wife was killed. Rick is also pushed around by his less-talented, half-his-age boss. So an old schoolmate says for $10,000 he'll kill any one person of his choosing. What do you do?If you're Rick, you let yourself get pushed into something you don't want to do, and you make racial slurs on not one but two occasions to Sandra Oh, keep her from getting a new job and get her fired from her old one. So it's kind of hard to root for old Rick.This film seems to want to tell us something, some truth about the human condition, but what? That all receptionists are mean? That all bosses are evil? That they always have clichéd, drunkard wives? That you can never get over the loss of a loved one? That grieving people are easily manipulated? That it's okay to be racist against Asians? That there are no good people, anywhere, ever? In the end, it's a waste of the acting talents of Bill Pullman, Agnes Bruckner, Sandra Oh, and Dylan Baker.

What an odd film. The first ten minutes or so establish the ethos concisely. An Oriental woman enters Bill Pulman's office for a job interview. He asks, "Didn't Laura tell you I was busy and ask you to wait outside? Either she did or she didn't. If she didn't, I call down and fire Laura. If she did, you close the door and wait outside until I'm finished. Which is it?" When he's finished with his business (which is twitting his boss over the results of a football game) he asks the woman in and scans her resume. "So, Monica, you'd like to work here." "Michelle," she corrects him. "Hmm. So you're Chinese." "My grandparents were from Japan," she says. Pullman then draws out his denial of her application, relishing every moment of her humiliation, telling her, "I won't hire anyone who sits there and corrects me all the time just because I didn't memorize every goddam item on her resume." There is another terrific scene in those first few minutes, when Pullman visits the office of his Big Boss, Duke. (Everybody seems to be named Duke or Rick or Buck or Nick.) Pullman teases Duke about having lost the bet on the game and the two of them start playing grabass in this masculine way that high school kids do, ragging one another and calling names and jabbing each other in the ribs, chuckling all the while. However, after 30 or 40 seconds of this rough house we realize that the razzing is becoming more one sided. Duke -- Pullman's superior -- is now shouting all the insults while Pullman is groaning with mock pain. "I'm gonna kill your family and you, then I'm gonna take a red hot poker and shove it up your a** and cut off your b**** and set 'em on fire." Pullman (doing a splendid job) shields himself with his hands, says, "No, no -- not THAT!", and crawls under the desk while Duke follows him, still shouting threats.It's an extremely funny scene but there's an element of sadism in it too, a kind of Schadenfreude, since the main reason it's funny is that it's happening to someone else. It's the same reason we might laugh at some poor guy who realizes in a public place that his fly is open and quickly zips up. We wouldn't want to trade places with him. It's all the more humiliating for Pullman because his boss looks about 10 or 20 years younger than he is. Man, is that a degrading position to be in. I once applied for a job at a pizza place and was interviewed by a kid less than half my age. "Ever had any delivery experience -- sir?", he inquired.The movie follows a not uncommon trajectory, from whimsically amusing through seriousness to tragedy. I kind of wish it had stayed funny, because the tragic part doesn't really tell us much. We don't emerge from the experience epiphanied or anything. Basically, Pullman hates his boss so much, particularly after finding that his boss has been diddling Pullman's daughter, that he hires somebody to kill Duke. There is a mistake in identity and the wrong person is killed. Hello? The performances are all good, especially Pullman. I'm coming to respect him as an actor more and more because he can accomplish so much while seeming to do so little. (Listen to his phony groans through clenched teeth when Duke is tormenting him during that first scene. A perfect blend of pretending and feeling.) The dialog scintillates when it sticks to arrogance and humiliation. In the second half it turns rather pedestrian, but still -- that first half is very nicely done.The direction is efficient without being flamboyant. The score is unique. Without really paying much attention, I was able to identify only four instruments -- base, drums, guitar, and accordion. Not a quartet though. They don't play at the same time, and rarely in any combination at all. One rather lengthy scene is scored using only up-tempo solo drums. The only tunes I could discern were Christmas songs or variations on them.The movie has its weaknesses but it's an original effort. It imitates nothing that's gone before. The people involved should get a pat on the back, even if some viewers might find it a little simple in its message. If you are too greedy for material things, you will regret it later. I think the Greeks may have called this sin "pleonaxis." In this case the punishment seems to have been brought on by the Jade Emporer through a Chinese curse.

This movie was a little drawn out, but isn't life. I think that a movie that is action packed is a little far fetched. Life is not always full of action at every moment. There are the days that drag on forever as it may seem. In this movie, I think the boredom that some have spoken about is needed to get the full effect of Bill Pullman's character. The daughter, is any normal teenager who has an insane amount of money. Rick, stuck-up, secretive... Very well played by the young actress. The boss is just a joke. I work for a corporation and trust me, I can see some young kid like him taking over one day. The part where Sandra Oh curses Rick is, how can I say, a little underachieved. She rambles on and on about how he is a evil person. That kind of curse is just outdated. I think it was a bad part of the movie. The club they are in is cool. Spy cams all over. Kinda scary when you think about that aspect too. Everyone watching everyone. But then again, that is also life. Everyone is always watching everyone. The daughter is talking to the boss, via sex chat, unknowingly, and Rick finds out. She then goes to a Christmas party to meet up with the BIG BOSS and do the deed. The whole time the boss thinks the daughter is Rick's wife. Stupid him. Well, Rick was planning on having the boss killed that night, and it just so happens he tells the man who is going to kill him that the boss is wearing a yellow ski jacket and a Santa hat. Little did Rick know that she wore the jacket and hat after her and the boss did the deed. All I can say is just be careful when you plan things. She ended up murdered at the end and Rick has to live with the fact that he killed his daughter and paid for it to happen. Life is crazy.