Rampage (William Friedkin, 1987)

 

Put on the case of serial killer Charlie Reece (Alex McArthur), prosecutor Anthony Fraser (Michael Beihn) has been tasked with finding him sane so he can face the death penalty.

Fraser’s personal opposition to the death penalty is quickly dissolved as he learns the full extent of Reece’s crimes.

As the trial progresses, Fraser and Reece’s defence team clash over the legal definition of insanity.

Rampage is a movie about human nature, and the ways in which we try to define and restrict specific kinds of behaviour.

If that sounds interesting, Rampage might be the movie for you.

According to his autobiography, Friedkin made the movie because of his own feelings about the death penalty.

While he opposed it as a younger filmmaker, by the mid-eighties, he had completely changed his position.

Attracted by the source novel’s focus on the legal defence of ‘insanity’, Friedkin took over the adaptation himself.

The film opens with Alex Reece’s first murders. His initial attacks are shot mostly from a distance, in wide shots that show the unsettling banality of the killer as he violates these bland suburban settings.

The violence is not shown - instead the film cuts away, or cuts to images of Reece rubbing blood over his naked body while lions prowl in a cage behind him.

Friedkin also avoids sticking with Reece’s subjectivity - keeping him at a remove so that the film’s central enigma is maintained.

Friedkin might have been pro-death penalty, but the film ends up being far more ambiguous - the characters and the film never arrive at a definitive decision on Reece’s culpability, let alone a definition for insanity (legal or otherwise).

While the details are interesting, one wishes the film was a little more fleshed-out.

Michael Beihn is not bad as the prosecutor but the character comes across as a little underwritten.

The whole movie feels like a legal quandary, without enough human drama to make it as compelling as it could be.

An interesting watch, but it feels like a better, more troubling film is just out of reach.

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