Philosophy of a Knife

audience Reviews

, 49% Audience Score
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    The premise for Philosophy of a Knife is an intriguing one, but is heavily abused for the sake of shock and brutality, and it grows old fast.
  • Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars
    Horribly boring. There is about 30 minutes of actual documentary, all of the rest is crappy added footage that rarely makes any sense.
  • Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars
    Worthless film, no use to humanity whatsoever.
  • Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
    Boring and not scary....a total misfire.
  • Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
    Horror folk, if you haven't seen this one, you should. It's grueling and gruesome and based in real testimony of U731 doctors and survivors.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    I can´t believe that people are disappointed for have not seen 'violence or terror". For God´s sake. there was a thousands people who suffered the worst pain who we can imagine, and the people said "boring"...Boring? Ask for that people if it was boring...Great movie and great denouncement.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    Fascinating "documentary" about Unit 731. Brilliant sound and video editing. Part documentary and part re-inactment. Very done well. Good special effects. Amazing that a lot of our medical references today come from what was done at that camp.
  • Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars
    This piece of trash is the aborted fetus, the result of a pairing between Andy Warhols Empire having back alley sex with the Trustinus film Nightmare Asylum. If movies suffered from birth defects, this one would be suffering from Downs Syndrome and Quadriplegia. This movie tries to accomplish many things... it fails at all of them. The entire thing comes off as a first year film student project by a student who should have been taking special education classes instead of film making. It tries to be informative, proclaiming itself to be part documentary. But in the 4+ hours of running time, there is nothing you won't learn that you wouldn't get from spending 5 minutes on Wikipedia. The archival footage that is used is sparse, and the actual relevant bits of archival footage take up less than one minute of the 4 hours of running time. The "re-enactments" that make up the most "shocking" moments of the film are horribly acted, terribly shot, and ridiculously long paced. The "actors" used to portray the prisoners are all healthy and attractive looking Caucasians, all 7 of them. The movie (I refuse to call this a film) shows you all seven "prisoners" in the beginning, and as it it counts down each prisoners death we are often shown the others sitting in their cell, no looking frightened, or sickly, or even malnourished, but just plain bored. When the "experiment re-enactments" are shown, every actor involved looks like they are sleep walking through the scene... They put up no resistance, the lie there almost sedately as teeth are pulled, internal organs are ripped from their vagina's, they are burned alive, etc... The entire time they are being tortured these victims show all the emotion of a wooden plank ordering coffee. It also claims to be a horror film, but it fails that horribly as well. For horror to work, you have to have an emotional attachment, and there is none to be found here for anyone. You don't feel anything for the victims, who just sit around looking like they are waiting for a bus until they meet their fates. You don't feel any resentment towards the "doctors" who look just as bored with their work. The only person with any on-screen dialog is the old Russian guy, the only person interviewed in the movie, Anatoly Protasov. The movie claims he is a former doctor and a translator who lived within a stones throw of the camp. He comes off as a sympathizer to the doctors. And the it is claimed he was an eye-witness to the events, it becomes clear from his own interview that he witnessed nothing. In each interview he seems on the verge of jerking off when talking about Unit 731. What the movie tries to be more than anything else, is torture porn, of the most obvious and deliberate variety, but it can't even get that right. The effects are horrible, worse than any 90's 20 dollar "shot on a camcorder" film.The shots of people who have supposedly been skinned alive, the musculature under the flesh, looks like heaps of modeling clay. Regardless, the gore would have failed even if it were done by experts, as it is edited so horribly, that any effect it would have on you other than than boredom is lost. This movie is the equivalent of porn focused on nothing but long drawn out scenes of a semi flaccid penis going into spoiled grapefruit interspersed with 4 minutes scenes of falling snow. There is more to get excited over watching a 12 hour long bingo game where no one wins, than there is in this movie. There is nothing redeemable, nothing shocking, nothing entertaining, nothing informative, and nothing shocking about this movie... Anytime it comes close to having even a moment of those things, the horrible editing, abysmal pacing, and absolute lowest caliber of directing and acting ruin it completely. The only thing this movie accomplishes, is being the single most boring and self indulgent piece of trash I have ever watched. The only people who will find this movie worth watching are mentally handicapped reprobates, and I am positive the only reason it was filmed was to give the director something to masturbate to. Avoid unless you really want to waste your time in the most boring and tedious manner possible.
  • Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars
    "Philosophy Of a Knife" - One Long, Dull Blade Well its been a long while since I've written a review and, jeez what a way to come back.... Full disclosure: I didn't finish this film. Only once have I not finished a film (oddly, "Batman and Robin"). Mostly cause its 4 hours long and boring as hell. First of all this movie is about Unit 731, where the Japanese Empire conducted atrocious experiments on over 10,000 people. Everything from microbiological experiments to outright vivisection. There is no denying that these crimes against humanity (and reason) are worthy of thoughtful examination and debate. This movie doesn't even get into the parking lot of the ballpark. Anyhoo, this movie is what I call a WDP ("Written/Directed/Produced). That makes it the Holy Trinity of Vanity Projects and - it certainly achieves that goal. Andrey Iskanov manages to produce 4 hours of utter garbage. The movie has an excessive lengths of shots of snow falling on a building (allegedly the Unit 731 in question). LOTS of them. There are also scenes of an interview with someone who worked there (allegedly, again). And off-camera narration of a Japanese nurse. I have no idea if these are genuine or not - I didn't make it to the credits to find out. In Iskanov's version however, the Unit is apparently made up of 6 or 7 medical staff, a couple of soldiers, and 6 prisoners. It makes no attempt to establish the scope of the atrocities. Nor is there any attempt to establish any characterization on either the staff or - worse, yet - the prisoners. There is no dialogue in the movie other than the interview, the Japanese nurse narration, and the chief narrator. As for the 'gore' there was plenty but to say it was over the top would be an understatement. Even during the so-called "teeth removing scene" there is enough 'blood' to have had the victim pass out. The other scenes go for maximum gore and guts which is almost 'high school' level at times. The one scene that stands out is a masked person apparently chopping up fake bodies while a Japanese woman plays a mouth harp in full medical regalia - that should give you an idea of the level of silliness I had to endure. And before I forget, the prisoners are all young Russian women and men. Which is all well and good except that 95% of all the prisoners actually used were Chinese and Korean - D'OH! And as for the soundtrack? Trent Reznor called, he'd like his sound back. Ok lets clean this mess up: FUN RATING: ZERO. LOL - you're sh*tting me, right?? This was a waste of time and raw materials. I wouldn't recommend this as a coaster since someone is bound to attempt to play it. INTEREST RATING: ONE (10). Yeah, believe it or not I can't even give this a ZERO in that department. SOLELY because the atrocities of 731 are all too real and while this movie doesn't even come close to describing the scope - it at least introduces a topic not many people are aware (or want to be aware of). TOTAL RATING: 1 Damn, I need a drink after this waste of time.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    Better in concept than execution. The documentary parts were more compelling to me than were the reenactments of the acts that happened in real life, which I felt were cheesy, funnier than they were disturbing.