A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is a hard movie to review. The production values and acting are really good and it keeps you guessing all along. I felt that it's only real flaw was that at the extreme end it left a few obvious loose ends, but this may even have been intentional, and, in any event, it is still just a movie after all. The only thing that keeps me from rating it a ten is that for me the violence is just so gruesome, gritty, extreme and realistic that it made me uncomfortable. My honest guess is that for most people nowadays this won't be a problem. I'm probably just a little bit too soft, and I've certainly seen worse, but the harsh violence got to me just a little bit too much.

Bad. Bad. No suspense. No tension. Graphic and gratuitous violence. Just dumb. Script sucked. Period. Michael Madsen - normally a fine actor - looks like he has no commitment to doing any real acting. He looks tired, bored, listless...apathetic. Hey Michael - you supposed to be an actor. You can't phone it in my friend. You gotta do more than just die your frock and stroll through the dialogue delivery.Just a joke of a film. Believe it or not - some of the actors were decent. Jake Busey can emote. So can the black dude. But what a bore. I guess it was hard to pull it off with such a low budget. I get it. I like low budget films - with some degree of sense. Not this brainless bore.

The Killing Jar has one of those scripts that is almost too perfect. It recalls iron-clad thrillers like Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" and David Mamet's "House of Games" with its no-detail-is-too-minor subtleties. And it even brought to mind shades of Mark Medak's "When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?" And then there are the Tarantino influences....Look, any script that can rarely veer outside of one location for an hour and a half and still keep your attention is doing something right, but film-fest fave Mark Young's The Killing Jar, save for a few bad MINOR character performances (Danny Trejo phoning it in as Danny Trejo is the most obvious), does practically everything right.It's late one night at a local diner in a no name redneck town, and all the locals are there, killing time. A report comes on the radio about a mass-murder in the next town over. When an anonymous stranger (Michael Madsen) arrives with a surly, stand-offish attitude, they gradually begin to suspect he's the perpetrator.What follows is an elaborate set of mind games and mental torture that reminded me favorably of "Ryder" in their intimate intensity, interspersed with a lot of sudden violence and gore. I liked how violent this movie was. It drove home the immediacy of the character's peril, fit with the script's over-arching theme, and looked very real...the blood is dark red and there are buckets of it...very similar to how it was used in Tarantino's classic Reservoir Dogs.That smacks of homage, as does the casting of Michael Madsen, who is playing, for better or worse, Mr. Blonde again. But you know what? I didn't care. The dude is good, and he has that role down pat. What surprised me were the alluring performances by the rest of the cast, most notably Amber Benson (who even contributes the closing song). She plays Noreen, a waitress who's drawn painfully true-to-life. Something in Ms. Benson's facial expressions and delivery really sell you on the goodness of her intentions and she's the badly needed anchor for this film. Harold Perrineau and Kevin Gage also provide solid support within difficult-to-pull-off multi-layered characters.The Killing Jar keeps you guessing and is ultimately very satisfying. It feels like a very well-written stage play. It deserves your attention, especially if you like character-driven suspense films.

When a mysterious stranger (Madsen) enters a diner after news of a killing spree, secrets become revealed. After hearing about a brutal killing, a mysterious stranger comes in to a diner at closing time. The waitress and the six customers begin to think this stranger is the killer. After taking control of the situation the stranger begins to uncover secrets of the hostages. Not everyone is who they seem to be. This is yet another movie with a lot of potential but doesn't keep your attention. There are some pretty intense parts but overall pretty slow moving. It's not terrible but not a great first choice for nightly entertainment. I give it a C.Would I watch again? - No, this is a movie that doesn't get better with repeated viewings.