Broken (Unrated)

The man who is holding Hope captive wants to break her, not kill her
I was watching the previews on the DVD for "Black Sheep" when the trailer for "Broken" came on. In that week's rentals I had a film called "Broken," but it was an Indie film starring Heather Graham and Jeremy Sisto and not this film, which turns out to be another example of the torture porn horror film, albeit with pretensions. What is interesting is that that both "Broken" films came out in 2006 and that apparently both have just been released on DVD in the past month. This brings to mind the possibility that somebody would recommend the Heather Graham "Broken" and rent this one by mistake (Don't laugh, I recommended the Academy Award winning "American Beauty" to a co-worker once and they went to the video store and picked up...

This Was A Joke, Right?
Description leads you to believe there's lots of torture and sadistic scenes in this movie, but the "series" of events is over in like the first 10-15 minutes of the film. Then you're treated to an hour of the most trying, dull scenes in horror film history. The people who gave this 4 or 5 stars must've never seen a decent horror flick, because this failed on the psychological front as well as the violence front. Two cringe-inducing scenes and that's it. They were pretty cool though, hence the two stars rather than one. Some annoying whimpering that we could've done without. The kidnapper was a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones dress wise. Personality wise, he was just dull dull dull. I dunno, man. This premise could've worked, and should have. The lead woman was sexy enough, but we never get to see her naked. Disappointing. So many scenes just rang untrue, and bringing in the 2nd girl was ridiculous. Only one person dies, and she's a minor character. I thought the...

A waste of time for everyone involved.
Not the worst low budget movie I've seen, but Broken is pretty bad. The acting of the lady playing the main character is not good. I can deal with a bad actress as long as I'm convinced she's doing her best. What I can't deal with is a plot that's totally pointless. *SPOILER* There's a scene where the lady is holding a knife over her sleeping kidnapper, instead of stabbing him in the neck or chest, she gives him a flesh wound on his leg then stumbles off in the forest to allow him to sneak up on her a few moments later. Just about every scene in this film is either unnecessary, pointless, or just lame. The crap in the beginning with the digging the razorblade out of your stomach to free yourself from the tree?!?! That was just stupid. Now I do understand that a crazy guy has to do crazy stuff, but there should also be some sort of crazy logic to it. I mean, why not make her dig the blade out of her bum? That at least would have been just as stupid, but hilarious and worth talking...

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