Noise

This is an interesting idea for a movie, as it deals with a situation we can all relate to: who hasn't, at least every now and then, faced the frustration of being awakened by a car alarm that goes off for no obvious reason in the middle of the night? Here, David (played by Tim Robbins) decides to do something about it. He becomes "The Rectifier" - a guy who goes out and does battle against all kinds of noise - mostly car alarms, but also burglar alarms on buildings, leaf blowers, etc. He smashes cars and windows and becomes a sort of vigilante hero in the process.

This is an interesting study of obsession. David - as is pointed out in the movie - has a strange connection with noise. He both hates it and he loves it. He won't take the simple solution of moving to a quieter area, and in fact - after his obsession leads to him losing his family when his wife walks out on him - moves to a noisier neighbourhood. In that sense, this is about more than noise. He feels powerless to do anything, but as a vigilante he finds a way to give himself a sense of power. In a way there's also an interesting reflection on addiction. How many people simply can't get away from something they're addicted to even though they know there are serious consequences involved? Had the movie chosen to treat this more seriously - even if done, as it was, with a certain comic undertone to it - it would have been even better. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the story and how it was told.

Essentially it begins with David being identified as The Rectifier by a reporter who wants his story, so it mostly gets told in the increasingly cliché flashback style. The movie also weakens significantly when it introduces the petition angle - David decides to go for a petition to put an initiative on the ballot to ban car alarms. The fun of the movie was in him working outside the system, although I recognize the irony that ultimately came from this when the system was used against him to crush the ballot initiative. Still, David was far more interesting as a vigilante. There are also too many unnecessary characters who entangle David in unnecessary relationships (for example, the threesome served no plot purpose that I could discern!) and ultimately distract from the movie's basic point.

Nevertheless, this is both interesting and relevant to modern viewers - and their ears, even if the story might have been better told. 7/10

Yes it's a movie about a man's frustration with urban noise, but you don't have to be noise sensitive to be engaged by his frustration with something over which he has little control or power. The movie is about how a man works through his rage at feeling powerless, exploring different modes -- impulsive, destructive, productive, etc. So if you've ever been up against anything, you can feel for the guy. Its also clever, funny, playful, quirky and very, very refreshing. It's an urban parable and a bit of a cartoon -- think of your next door neighbor as a slightly deranged hooded avenger -- but has a feeling of truth.

David Owen is as mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. What he's mad about is car alarms. Car alarms that go off in the middle of the night, or when he's trying to put his colicky baby to sleep, or when he's making love to his wife, or when he's just this close to grasping a particularly dense passage in a treatise by Hegel. After years of putting up with this ubiquitous urban din and vainly pleading with the authorities to do something about it, David finally resorts to vigilantism, smashing out the windows and dismantling the alarms of the offending vehicles, even going so far as to leave a calling card in his wake identifying himself as The Rectifier. Soon the mysterious noise-fighter has achieved near folk-hero status among his fellow Manhattanites and become a true thorn-in-the-side to the city's unctuous mayor, played amusingly by William Hurt.

Sort of a dark comic, upscale version of "Taxi Driver," "Noise" is a rage-against-the-machine fantasy that chooses as its target the relentless cacophony of city life. David, who's a successful attorney in his day job, isn't quite as off the rails as Travis Bickle, but there are times when his obsessiveness begins to border on the psychotic. Is David suffering from mental illness or is he simply acting out against the impotency and inadequacy he feels in all areas of his life? Or does he just get off on hating and being angry all the time? Whatever the underlying psychological reason, once he establishes himself as The Rectifier, David develops a whole new outlook on life. And who among us can't identify at least to some extent with David's frustration, for don't we all have something that forever gets under our skin and that we would do just about anything we could to get it to stop? David just happens to be the one person to actually act on that impulse.

Written and directed by Henry Bean, "Noise" is a satire of metropolitan neuroticism performed in a minor key. Tim Robbins carries the film with his understated portrait of a man wound up so tight that he threatens at any moment to completely unravel. He receives solid support from Bridget Moynihan as the wife who can't understand why the man she married has suddenly turned into a raving lunatic, and Margarita Levieva as an attractive newspaper reporter who uncovers The Rectifier's true identity and wants to explore what really makes this explosive man-of-the-people figure "tick."

The humor isn't always as uproarious as it could be, but everyone, not just city-dwellers, should find something to appreciate in David Owens' amusingly extended rant.

Hey, this is a great film to watch on a long haul flight. The existential drama is more play than film, more essay than story, but it has its attractions. The project maybe anarchic but in the end normality is restored, the individual is better adjusted and the danger of action has been accommodated within the everyday world. It could be a mature taste is needed, it could be that the subtle attractions of an anti-hero who is struggling with Hegel, but, somewhere in this cultural density, there are views of sexuality that shift attention from the repressed to the expressed. The same goes for middle age rage. And anyway, Robbins is at his best as a Camus styled man of his time.

The first few minutes of Noise demonstrated the promise that lies in the "basic material": a movie about a noised-out guy who took the law into his own hands. If it had stuck with the theme and explored it more widely, or broken it into various plot-strands, the idea could have carried a feature film. As it is, the picture is spoiled by its one-dimensionality, and pretty girls have to be roped in to - literally - sex it up. Anyone who has ever dreamed of smashing a sledgehammer into a howling car, or firing an Exocet at a passing jetliner, will fancy this title, but sadly it does not live up to its promise. Nevertheless, if you enjoy Tim Robbins, it's a nice outing for him.