BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

bowmanblue There is a tendency among modern superhero (films) to portray their particular marked crusader as some sort of flawed, anti-hero - take Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy, Robert Downey Jr in the Iron Man films and The Watchmen.Bruiser was released in 2000, just slightly before this trend really took off. It's about a put-upon worker who wakes up to find his features have changed to that of a plain white mask. Therefore, now no one knows who he is, he seeks revenge on all those who scorned him. This sounds like a basic sort of superhero movie plot and, courtesy of zombie-lord George Romero, he adds a bit of horror into it too.Does it work? Sadly, not really.Although it could have been decent enough, it suffers from a lack of stars, a clunky script (Romero also wrote it and, as anyone who has watched his more recent zombie films will know he's kind off gone off the boil with his pen) and quite possibly budget. There's no real action and only a few kills. However, my biggest gripe was how our (anti?) hero was never really the put-upon loser he was billed as. Henry Creedlow works for a famous fashion magazine (think Vogue etc), has a beautiful wife, lives in a big house, drives a fast car and plays the stock market. From this we're supposed to feel sorry for him. Okay, he gets pushed around a bit, but, for me, it just didn't make him as much as a loser as the film suggested. Then there's the 'super villain.' Only he's not. Captain America fought Red Skull, with Batman it was the Joker. Here, the 'villain' is an annoyingly loud guy who sleeps with more women than Peter Stringfellow. He's not trying to kill anyone, nor is he trying to take over the world. He's just an idiot. Again, hardly someone you can truly hate (get annoyed by - yes - but not hate).Full marks for Jason Flemyng for his America accent. Maybe Bruiser will get a remake one day and give it a budget and a script makeover. In the meantime, probably one to avoid. Sorry, George - I still love Dawn of the Dead.

BA_Harrison Bruiser, perhaps George Romero's most bizarre film to date (yes, even stranger than knights on motorbikes or a telepathic psycho killer monkey), is the darkly comical story of Henry Creedlow, a trusting, congenial fellow who allows himself to be treated like a doormat by almost everyone he knows, including his sleazy boss Milo (Peter Stormare), his beautiful wife Janine (the stunning Nina Garbiras), and his supposed best friend James (Andrew Tarbet); in fact, Henry is such a nobody in the eyes of others that he wakes up one morning to find his face completely devoid of character, white and featureless with pin-holes for eyes. Lacking a visible identity, the now liberated Henry goes a little crazy and proceeds to do what he has only previously dreamt of: stand up to those people who have crapped on him from a great height.As if this concept wasn't weird enough, George's bold treatment of his already unconventional material makes Bruiser even more of an audacious and admirable movie: social commentary, existential musing, witty dialogue, exaggerated characters, surprisingly unrestrained sex, and a truly off-beat, cartoonish finale featuring hedonistic, costumed party-goers at a nightclub, cult horror rock band The Misfits, and a frickin' laser gun, all go to guarantee that, while it might not always work quite as well as intended, Bruiser makes for one hell of a unique viewing experience, and is further proof that Romero is not the one-trick-pony many accuse him of being.

Kazetnik There is about 20 minutes of interesting movie here, in the opening preamble and in the grand guignol of the masquerade party. In between, this is poor.I love Romero films, for, amongst other things, their mixture of grotesque violence and gallows humour. With Bruiser, apart from the delicious viciousness of the set-up of our faceless non-hero, this provided some peculiar and unsatisfactory combination of Zorro and Death Wish, without atmosphere, coherence or even any real energy. Did the whole budget get blown on the set for the masquerade? I wanted to like it, was expecting to at least enjoy it in a time-passing way, and was only bored and frustrated by it.

Michael_Elliott Bruiser (2000) * 1/2 (out of 4) A business exec (Jason Flemyng) is abused by co-workers, friends and his wife and all of this leads to him having morbid thoughts about killing them. One day he wakes up and his face is gone and in its place is a white mask like thing that takes away all of his features so he goes out for revenge. This was Romero's return to the genre and his first movie since 1993's The Dark Half and sadly it's probably the worst I've seen from him. The screenplay, by Romero, is all over the place and it's never quite clear what Romero is going for. As to be expected, Romero throws in his typical social commentary but he really isn't saying too much. Flemyng is decent in his role but it's Peter Stormare who steals the show as his sleazy boss who has an affair with his wife. Tom Atkins is wasted as a detective. I'm really not sure what could have been done to make this movie better but I'd say you would have to blow up the screenplay and start from scratch. It's a shame that a talent like Romero has made so few films over the past thirty-years but I guess that's the price he pays to stay away from the studios. With that said, he has proved to be good with studio films and something like The Dark Half is a lot better than this film.