Search - Stag on DVD

Starts slow but ends with a bang

T. Wallace | 07/14/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Saw this movie only once a long, long time ago, and have been trying to figure out all these years what the movie was. After trying Very Bad Things (which is a very bad, annoying film) I finally put all the pieces together and found the DVD. It starts much slower than I remembered, and I didn't recall Taylor Dane being in the flick (man, is she ugly...why use her, anyway? There are millions of beautiful, sexy actresses to choose from. What a lame choice!)

Anyway, great performances by everyone (except for Taylor Dane, who also can't act.) Superb characters and interesting, real dialogue that keeps you engrossed. Once everything comes crashing down and the drama really unfolds, the intensity of the acting is enthralling and magnetic; you really feel like you're there with those guys. What's great is, I could relate to nearly all the characters, and some I hated, some I sympathized with, others I felt indifferent toward. Really nice when the director and actors can pull off exactly what's needed to elicit these kinds of reactions and emotions from the audience.

I would've given it a higher rating if the beginning wasn't such a struggle to get through. The first 20 minutes of setup is a bit weak and pointless. The characters do such a tremendous job with the material that the whole videocam intro of each person is meaningless and redundant; about 90% of what's intimated in the videocam highlights are later outright expressed by the actors. It was a boring waste of 15 minutes of film.

Here are some recommedations for "guy" flicks to watch at night: Judgment Night, The Trigger Effect, Cube/Cube 2, Midnight Express, Alien/Aliens, Lifepod, Deep Rising, Master and Commander, The Boys Next Door, Training Day."

Don't kill the stripper at your friends bachelor party. Espe

Sid the Elf | North Pole | 07/27/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The ABC channel has a strong reputation for fine quality tv programs, but is known for something very different in Sid's opinion. It's known for showcasing some of the finest b out there you'd probably never stumble upon otherwise. Now you may have never noticed this but Sid sure has. There is a small window late Saturday and Sunday nights where they'll show a late night flick nine times out on ten being super b. We caught Red Line on it one Saturday night if your questioning this claim. Even that one were the guy trapped a thief in the car in his garage, in which we can't remember the title to. The list goes on and on. Which brings us to our d list extravaganza called Stag starring; Jerry Stiller aka Frank Costanza, washed up Andrew McCarthy aka Blane McDonnagh , the old Talk Soup host John Henson (the guy with the spot on his hair), Mario Van Peebles, the kid from Surviving the Game whose dad forced him to be there, Kevin Dillon aka Johhny Drama Chase, and Ben Gazzara aka the immortal Brad Wesley!

The deal with this one is revolved around a bachelor party gone very wrong. This guy Victor is thrown a surprise bachelor party by his business partner Mario Van Peebles. Mario invites a bunch of guy's from Victor's past who he hasn't seen n a while including a drug addicted Andrew McCarthy (which probably wasn't too far of a character stretch at that point). These balloon heads wind up getting hammered drunk and accidentally kill one of the strippers. The whole situation spirals out of control and they hold the remaining stripper hostage and try to keep neighbor Frank Costanza to stop popping by.

This one was b to the max. It had that fantastic grainy 90's action/drama look which fits so well late at night. It really brought Sid back to the good times when these were the flicks were caught on a regular basis thanks to the forgotten cable channels. It even had a couple breast thrown in which would've kept Santa up for a little while. This one was gold in a b sense containing maybe the largest d list cast Sid have seen yet to date. It was one of those time you keep spotting people, but this time it just didn't seem to end. Awesome! This is absolutely one we would have done back in the good times."

Classic

William R. Nicholas | Mahwah, NJ USA | 08/05/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The plot of Stag is straight-forward: a bunch of yuppies, and fringey friends they hang with for show, hire two strippers for a bacholor party. One of the strippers is killed on accident. They try a cover-up, but the second stripper is not cooperating. They debate killing her, letting her go, and holding her kid for ransom.

These guys are rich, powerful, and corperate. Their lives are very important--to them. They can't lose what they have worked for, because it is how they define themselves. Right and wrong does not apply here. Besides, why should they conceede anything for a working girl. Only one of them is the voice of reason.

Obviously, you are not supposed to like, or even empathize, with these guys. The point of Stag is taking regular people, putting them in an unthinkable situation, and watching their reaction.

As a viewer, you would hope you would handle this differently, and if this does not occur to you, you probably have less of a soul than these guys. But Stag is more a study about fight/flight and mob pshycology than it is answering moral questions.

Stag also implies a class battle: seeing how these rich charactors can delude themselves into making the blue collar stripper sub-human. It is only through their narcisisim--basing their human worth on status-that they can jusify their actions.

They are in this situation, of course, because they never had a better moral compass to begin with. They are still frat-brats: they just have cars and houses now. Take that away, and they have nothing, inside or out.

Great film.

As to the partiers, except for one, string all the f---ers up.

"