1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The book certainly must be much better, July 19, 2008
This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (DVD)
for, this movie is pretty awful. It's difficult, really, to say what the story is about; although, what happens is a severely alienated young man goes about 'setting the ledger straight.' This young man was born and raised under difficult circumstances to a mother who, now terminally ill, is out of her mind either through insanity or drink. Already disturbed, his mother's death triggers a prolonged psychotic event and, having taken accounting classes at the urging of his best friend now deceased, the lad creates a ledger in which life's slings and arrows become fodder for the balance sheet. For instance, if he is run off the road by a Rolls Royce, he must scratch the paint of a Rolls Royce to compensate or balance the ledger, and so on. Eventually he takes to killing large numbers of people. Meanwhile, the movie is intersticed with scenes supposedly involving Leonardo DaVinci and Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan monk who was responsible for systematizing the double entry ledger system; and of scenes from childhood indicating his early proclivity for mischief. It isn't clear whether these are the products of a fevered imagination or portrayals of theoretical 'actual events'. In either guise they are meaningless and don't propel the story. One suspects this movie attempts to find the success of 'Trainspotting' through its use of these jumpshots and the shambolic storyline. It fails abjectly possibly because of the relative strengths of the respective novels. This one was penned in an 'experimental' style which evidently eschews good story-telling. This rates two stars because there is going to be a small number of people who will contrive some reason for thinking either the movie cool; likely the same sort who extolled the virtues of 'Eraserhead.' Make no mistake, this is a genuinely poor movie not worth watching, definitely not worth buying.
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