Kalifornia with a capital "K"

Author: dee.reid from United States
22 February 2002

I just got done watching "Kalifornia" on Showtime for the fourth time since I first saw it back in July of 2001. You would think that with the recent wave of serial  killer films, that "Kalifornia" would be amongst some of the earlier films worthy of mention but hasn't. Perhaps if this film had been released sometime  between like 1996-1999, maybe it might have been more successful. In my opinion, "Kalifornia" is much different from most serial killer films released during  the late 1990s. It has an almost completely different atmosphere from most of today's serial killer films like "Seven" or "The Bone Collector". Many serial killer  films have shown a killer but that person is always behind a mask or we never see enough of them to actually learn anything about them. "Kalifornia" is a film  that actually tries to break through that barrier and actually understand the criminal mind. It tries to answer questions like "why do they do the things they do?

Is it because of something that happened in their past? Does it make them feel superior or powerful? Or do they do it because they like the thrill of the kill?"  These are some of the things that "Kalifornia" tries to answer but also leaves room for us to try and figure things out for ourselves. Brad Pitt makes an  everlasting impression as Early Grayce. When we first meet Early in the beginning of the film, we see that he is obviously one disturbed individual. When we  first see him, it's late at night. Early is possibly drunk. We then see him pick up a rock, throw it off a bridge, and it later lands on the windshield of a passing  car. Pitt is fierce in this film. It is always good to see him when he plays psychos or really bad people. It's funny that this would later lead him play a true loon  like in "12 Monkeys" and that he would be on the other end of the spectrum in David Fincher's "Seven".