h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dark humour. Alcholic, insomniac, sweat-soaked and blood-stained humour that serves most adequately to highlight the drama. If I were to make comparisons, MASH would come to mind. Not merely the medical themes, but the hellish setting and the characters' individual methods of dealing with it. (Coincidence? The lead character's a lush called Frank Pierce, Hawkeye's full name is Benjamin FRANKlin PIERCE)

BotD would be best described as an unpleasant hallucination, there's no real linear direction, but it has its own natural course to follow, a beginning and an end.The film is more disturbing dramatically than it is graphically IMHO (you would *see* as bad if not worse in ER or Chicago Hope), and if it weren't the truly high calibre of all concerned - actors, director, writer, etc., the film *might* have been unwatchable. But BotD doesn't just disturb, it touches, amazes and amuses. And it's easily Cage's best work since Leaving Las Vegas.