This should have gotten the Jury award for biggest turkey of the year. People think that if the actors talk in some sort of mumbo jumbo they must be expressing something prophetic... in this case pathetic. Oh it's a product of LA all right, self absorbed and searching for the meaning of life in a place which has already determined that the meaning of life is the fast lane. The protagonist not only gets off the fast lane but falls off the track all together. The acting by some of the principals is bad. The acting of some of the supporting cast is laughable. The director must have been high on life or pot for this is really one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Given material that has merit, the director has produced a few fine works... this is far from one. I doubt if most people who actually paid money to see it lasted to the end. Why bother? I got it in the remainder bin of Comcast... those free movies they allow you to see. They should pay people to watch stuff like this.

...or as I like to think of it, THE END OF VIOLENCE is the greatest scifi crime thriller that never was.As always with Wim Wenders, the plot is fantastic. But, as always with Wim Wenders, the movie isn't about the plot, and those who expect to be carried by the plot will be disappointed. In the same way WINGS OF DESIRE had a great plot about angels but was not a fantasy; in the same way UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD had a great plot about a high tech dream machine but was not about technology; in the same way LISBON STORY had a riveting plot about a missing person but was not a mystery, here we have the same Wendersian formula which he pulls off flawlessly.The plot, if you're curious, is about a futuristic "God machine" that can eliminate people with the push of a button. Designed ostensibly for crime prevention & surveillance (the old "to protect & serve" - where have we heard that before?), it gets out of control and takes murder & corruption to the next level of clinical perfection. Caught up in the game is Mike Max, a movie producer struggling with his own intense xenophobia and paranoia, which, like a disease, he himself spreads to society through his films.That's all I'll say about the plot because (a) I don't want to ruin anything, and (b) like I said, the plot is secondary. What's really important, as you watch this movie, is to pay attention to the thought-provoking dialogue, the philosophical allusions and the overall metaphor of the situation. If you can tune into that stuff, then you're set for a great experience.I'll give you just one example of the philosophy. There's a scene early on where they talk about the "observer effect" (you might recognize it as the paradox of "Schrödinger's cat" which you can look up on wikipedia). This is the fundamental theme of the film: the idea that, even by "impartially observing", we change the situation or in some cases destroy it. As one of the characters says, it's like "flipping on the light to observe the darkness." What a poetic & appropriate analogy.This movie is choc full of that kind of stuff, and you may miss it if you're expecting car chases and gunfire. No, instead you get the ultimate anti-violence violence film, and I gotta give Wenders a standing ovation on being the first director I've seen pull it off. A lot of movies in the past have carried a message of anti-violence; yet the films sink to the thrill of showing violence themselves and often glorifying it (the biggest example would be Norm Jewison's classic ROLLERBALL), and this becomes confusing if not outright hypocritical. But in this case, we get a chilling depiction of the epidemic of violence without showing any blood & guts to excite our savage instincts. It remains an intellectual film, not visceral. Don't get me wrong; this movie is plenty suspenseful, and on more than one occasion it'll have your heart flopping like an electrified noodle. But it's all done by way of the mind. To me, that's what makes this depiction of violence all the more effective & frightening: the way it's so clean & neat like in a video game. And without any fuss, someone's head could just go pop.This is the best film I've seen in a while. I'm only taking off a few points because I wished it was twice as long & had more monologues, like some of the older Wenders films. But I have to say this film sticks to its objective and delivers a perfect product.

This film was just shown on United Kingdom television at three o'clock in the morning and it took me totally by surprise as I had never even heard of this movie before. Its a good movie but I just wonder how much of an influence the David Lynch film "Lost Highway" had on the casting of Bill Pullman, he's a decent actor but whatever happened to his career? He seems to play these type of roles very well and its a nice surprise when Gabriel Byrne pops up on-screen. If you get the opportunity to watch this film then its definitely worth a look-in if you need to pass a few hours of time. Often the direction behind the film could be improved and their are some loose-ends which could really do with being tied up but some of the imagery and ideas are of sound mind and as thrillers go this is from a good period in the genre. As registered in the "Vote" section I could only give this film a six out of ten due to the average directing and loose-ends. If you like Lost Highway by David Lynch and also featuring Bill Pullman then "The End Of Violence" is another film you will enjoy

"The End Of Violence"!!! How grand-sounding! Another hopelessly pretentious and clumsily made drama as only Wim Wenders can make it.From all the German directors who ever made it outside the confines of Germany he is easily the worst. At the very beginning he gives us a taste of nonsense to come: Pullman informs us that he went into movie-making because as a child he was afraid(!) of movies (and people in general). First of all, I've never heard of "movie-phobia", and even if such a person existed outside of Wenders's silly fantasy world they would probably end up in a lunatic asylum at best, and not as a successful yuppie. The next nonsense is Byrne telling a friend that the reason he doesn't drive is that he wants to have as little to do with modern technology as possible; meanwhile, he works in an observatory, surrounded by amazing high-tech gadgetry! Driving a car, by comparison, is like living in a cave! This wasn't meant to be Wenders's humour but an attempt to define Byrne as a complex and fascinating character. The attempt failed. After Pullman, the hot-shot producer, more-or-less mysteriously survives the kidnap and attempted murder, he is virtually adopted by a Latino family! And works there as a gardener or something for months to come! Weird, yes, but in a dumb way. All the while it is so obvious that the bald grim-faced guy is responsible for all the nasty goings-on. Then there is the detective who starts his investigation by flirting with a stunt woman(!)-turned-actress and later professes his love to her even though they still barely know each other! After they have sex, she rewards him with info as to the whereabouts of the missing Pullman. It's all so silly, so inane... The same detective hugs McDowell (Pullman's wife) during the interview! In between all the absurd and far-fetched goings-on there are the obligatory "deep European" moments: we have a black woman recite "poetry" - or modern poetry - which is so painfully PC, not to mention pointless, stupid and so very dull. After she finishes her pretentious little poem (about her father playing with her vagina) the stunt woman approaches her and says that she never met her daddy. How deep is that?! Later on, a badly-written black character raps more poetry and gets an applause for it; we later get to see his penis, which is also obligatory in "deep European art" films. What's the point of that fight in the bar?! Utterly pointless. And what's with that dialogue between Pullman and McDowell at the end? What's all that nonsense about? Dumb, dumb, dumb... The mark of every bad director is to have children behave like adults, so why should Wim be an exception? The little Latino girl philosophizes about not having a chance to see her dead father: "but we can't always get what we want"; this, coming from the mouth of a 7 year-old! She also says something in the last scene but by then I was almost half-asleep so I don't remember it.But what can one honestly expect from a person who makes a movie that is partly scripted by Bono(?!) in which he casts a rank amateur such as Milla Jovovich, in a piece of garbage known as "Million Dollar Hotel"? It is monumentally ironic and arrogant that Wim makes a brief mock-attack at Schwarzenegger early on in the movie; the latter may be a bad actor, but his contribution to the world of film is already about a hundred times that of Wim's. Wim even attempts brief self-satire (if I may call it that) by having the Hungarian director (Kier) make a sarcastic remark about making a mistake to leave Europe to make movies. In reality, Wim should thank Satan, with whom he must have a contract, that he ever got a chance to direct at all, let alone for Hollywood. As is plain to see, I have used many exclamation marks in this review; the movie is full of absurdities, bad dialogue, and is rather pointless. But the "!" is more a reflection of my hatred towards talentless, pretentious European directors than this particular movie - as insipid as it doubtlessly is. Leonard Maltin actually refers to this film as "gorgeous to look at" but even he wasn't so gullible to give it a good rating.