Sort of like a quick swipe at Rigaletto if it was being done as a half hour Twilight Zone. In this one, the hunchback jester, I mean business executive called Rick, is played by Bill Pullman. He works for some horny little dick young enough to be his son called Duke. Duke has already masturbated while having e-sex with Rick's daughter on line. Rick's daughter and her girl friend are supposed to be teen-agers but are long limed, tall, slim hipped pouty lipped 20 somethings in schoolgirlesq outfits. I think one girl was in a pleated plaid skirt even. The other girl wore glasses and had kinda okay hair but you could tell that underneath she was really hot. The set up of a thousand soft core videos. It lasts as long as Duke does, sort of a jerky little w*nk video in itself stuck into the film.Sandra Oh comes for a job interview and Rick treats her like sh*t. Later when Rick and Duke go out to a club they get her fired as a waitress. She puts a curse on Rick. An old chum, perhaps, visits Rick and offers his services in knocking down what's standing in his way to the top- Duke. This is the 'cutthroat' of the opera. At first he turns him down but when the discovers his daughter has been getting it on with Duke he approves of the hit.It going to take place at the office Christmas party. The daughter shags Duke and then slips out in his jacket (which choice is cornier- this or overhearing the plot and sacrificing herself for love of Duke?) and she's the one who is hit. The End.This could really have easily been done as a Twilight Zone or maybe a US Steel Hour/Climax but its stretched because it needed certain accessory scenes, the soft core girls talking dirty, masturbation, soft core copulation etc. Certain foreign territories, as the salesmen call them, demand certain things. Usually the more prudish countries want the prurient scenes. As long as it doesn't go over a certain line.Nothing here goes over the line. The plot is simplified from the opera libretto but it is also highly stylized. The cutthroat is sinister and obscure, omnipotent and yet quite crude. This magnificent professional murder at the end is no more than a cheap perfunctory sidewalk snatching with hit men not knowing the difference between a short guy and a tall lanky woman.Like an opera RICK seems to exist merely to present some transitory state of being. The narrative is a vertical pole with scenes pegged into it with their contents hanging there like cloaks. In its metamorphosis from Verdi Opera to film, RICK seems stuck in TV land, its proudest boast being that it got made.

This movie was a little drawn out, but isn't life. I think that a movie that is action packed is a little far fetched. Life is not always full of action at every moment. There are the days that drag on forever as it may seem. In this movie, I think the boredom that some have spoken about is needed to get the full effect of Bill Pullman's character. The daughter, is any normal teenager who has an insane amount of money. Rick, stuck-up, secretive... Very well played by the young actress. The boss is just a joke. I work for a corporation and trust me, I can see some young kid like him taking over one day. The part where Sandra Oh curses Rick is, how can I say, a little underachieved. She rambles on and on about how he is a evil person. That kind of curse is just outdated. I think it was a bad part of the movie. The club they are in is cool. Spy cams all over. Kinda scary when you think about that aspect too. Everyone watching everyone. But then again, that is also life. Everyone is always watching everyone. The daughter is talking to the boss, via sex chat, unknowingly, and Rick finds out. She then goes to a Christmas party to meet up with the BIG BOSS and do the deed. The whole time the boss thinks the daughter is Rick's wife. Stupid him. Well, Rick was planning on having the boss killed that night, and it just so happens he tells the man who is going to kill him that the boss is wearing a yellow ski jacket and a Santa hat. Little did Rick know that she wore the jacket and hat after her and the boss did the deed. All I can say is just be careful when you plan things. She ended up murdered at the end and Rick has to live with the fact that he killed his daughter and paid for it to happen. Life is crazy.

this movie showed a lot of promise in the beginning, effective in its displays of style, sadism, humor, and even maybe some sensitivity.but as the film went along, and the ending came within site and it was clear where the film was going, you become angry at the laziness of the filmmakers in devising the ending and also become angry at them for stupidly misusing their artistic gifts (which were on display in this movie) to come to a conclusion that they probably think was iconoclastic but actually was just pathetic.i registered solely to tell all the potential viewers of this film that if you watch this movie, be prepared to despise everyone involved in this film after the credits role.so if i'm not being crystal clear here, i hope the director and the writer on this film never are allowed to be involved in any way whatsoever with another movie I lay eyes upon.

If you go to the movies to feel good about life, to feel all warm and fuzzy about the world around you, then "Rick" isn't for you. However, if you delight in stories that revel in the darker side of human nature, that have a nasty sense of humor, then this incredibly dark comedy might be just the film for you.Based on Verdi's opera, "Rigoletto," editor-turned-director Curtiss Clayton brings to life a script by Daniel Handler, better known to audiences as the "Lemony Snicket" author. In "Rick," Bill Pullman plays the title character, a man who works at a company called Image, though we're never told what exactly he or the company do. His boss Duke, almost half Rick's age, engages in machismo talk and has a penchant for online chats on a porn I'm service.To reveal more would be to destroy much of the fun of this very wicked film."Rick" actually goes way beyond dark comedy. Pullman gains tremendous glee from playing someone loathsome. Come to think of it, with the exception of Rick's teen-age daughter Eve (played by the marvelously talented young actress Agnes Bruckner), there really aren't any likable people in this movie. And Eve, who's the only one who sees the good in her dad, isn't exactly squeaky clean. She gets her kicks by "talking" dirty on the Internet. Bruckner, whose depiction of an emotionally scarred high school student in "Blue Car" was one of last year's highlights, finds just the right mix of confidence and innocence to make Eve believable.Often, it is hard to be absorbed by a film where none of the characters seems to have any redeeming virtues. But, strangely, "Rick" manages to hook us. Mostly because we're initially intrigued by who these people are and why they behave so despicably. Watching Rick berate a woman interviewing for a job is uncomfortable. Yet, there's something hypnotic about the whole sequence.This is extremely broad social satire veering into the absurd. This film is filed with several odd moments. The interview aside, there's the initial macho gamesmanship between Rick and Duke (played by Aaron Stanford as a slimy creature, quite a departure from playing 15-year-old Oscar Grubman in "Tadpole"). Then there's Buck (Dylan Baker), who meets Rick in a bar where people spy on other patrons. Buck tells Rick he runs his own company. There's a funny joke about that when Rick sees Buck's business card."Rick" is by no means a perfect dark comedy. But it definitely has a strange way of keeping you interested in its characters. They may not be likable but, damn it, they're most certainly intriguing and captivating. If you're in the mood for something out of the ordinary and you relish films that dabble in morally decrepit people, give "Rick" a peek. I've seen better films this year, but this one will stick in my mind for a long time.