Naturally, if I'm going to commit myself to a four+ hour long movie I usually want nothing more than to enjoy it or to, at least, get some sort of conscious trace of something 'worthwhile' out of it. And after hearing a few prior remarks pertaining to it's "shocking" content and judging by the nicely gruesome box-art on the Unearthed Films release, I figured I'd be in for some quality sickness. "Philosophy of a Knife" not only drove the ongoing theme of "creative" torture methods into utter tedium - it failed on every aspect it tried to cover - whether it be biographical coverage, a horror film (which director Andrey Iskanov preposterously claims he wasn't aiming for), a "taboo breaking" torture flick, or graphically nasty sleaze of any kind...
Now if you have seen the CAT III flick "Men Behind the Sun" you are probably aware of the concept of Unit 731 in compliance with the horror genre. Yes, you can take horrible reality of the past and convert it into "entertainment" for sick bastards like myself who seek out this kind of stuff. While THAT film conveyed it's premise, not only effectively, but in a respectably condensed run-time of somewhere around 1 hour and 45 minutes - "Philosophy of a Knife" goes out of it's way to pretentiously exceed that into what was KINDA two feature films; tail credits on BOTH parts. This thing is so needlessly drawn out to it's obnoxiously deplorable length that, especially considering the complete absence of plot, it clearly pushes every scene into complete monotony! I guess the best way to describe this film would be: amateur music video styled, four-hour "Guinea Pig" movie with enough copious snow-fall filler and meaningless blather from the old guy occasionally shown during an interview and questionable narration from a woman who was apparently present during the actual events... It incorporates stock footage and interviews in a meager attempt to pass the film off as a "historical" biopic...
Granted, the material, itself, is interesting and even an exploitive display of the documented atrocities of Unit 731 could shed some light on the facts, without sugar-coated blacklisting or toned down descriptions. "Philosophy of a Knife" had a primary goal of depicting the "crimes against humanity" by simply showing about a dozen or MORE gruesome torture sequences back-to-back while Iskanov attempts to call that historical merit! For a 249 minute movie - I feel like it should have made more of an attempt to DRAW me, the humble viewer, into the subject matter a lot more. I felt nothing while watching this except boredom! I do LOVE brutal shit that shamelessly chooses grisly macabre imagery and outrageous carnage over plot, but this film was just taking advantage of the situation and making it boring! Length is also something I don't usually harp on, but if a movie has absolutely nothing to offer as far as even the SLIGHTEST glimmer of PLOT or substance TO the brutality, it is a FAIL in my eyes. The old guy's input was entirely unnecessary and boring - going on for an extra twenty minutes after the movie APPEARED to be over and I actually found a lot of the effects to be pretty poor and unconvincing...
"Philosophy of a Knife" is, unfortunately, a major disappointment. My rambling has ceased!
Naturally, if I'm going to commit myself to a four+ hour long movie I usually want nothing more than to enjoy it or to, at least, get some sort of conscious trace of something 'worthwhile' out of it. And after hearing a few prior remarks pertaining to it's "shocking" content and judging by the nicely gruesome box-art on the Unearthed Films release, I figured I'd be in for some quality sickness. "Philosophy of a Knife" not only drove the ongoing theme of "creative" torture methods into utter tedium - it failed on every aspect it tried to cover - whether it be biographical coverage, a horror film (which director Andrey Iskanov preposterously claims he wasn't aiming for), a "taboo breaking" torture flick, or graphically nasty sleaze of any kind...
