I liked this picture pretty well. The concept, in my opinion, is well worth it and probably very needed since the unfortunate death of Princess Diana. However, the final message of the movie has a bitter after-taste.

"Paparazzi" is about action movie star Bo Laramie and his family attempting to cope with the tabloid media hounded them and their privacy. The picture begins simply enough. Laramie finds himself on the cover of tabloids naked with his wife. At first, he accepts this is what celebrities must deal with.

However, as the picture progresses, Laramie butts heads with Rex Harper. A tabloid photojournalist and chief editor of the "Paparazzi" gossip publishing, notice I don't use the word newspaper. Harper for some reason wants to destroy Harpers life because he calls him a worm on TV or something like that. Harper's motivations are very sketchy.

Anyways, Harper and his crew tail Laramie and his family in their car and force them to get into an accident, which leaves the son in a coma and the wife in surgery, losing a spleen. However, both are in stable conditions. The event was very unfortunate and angered me, but let's stay focused on the final results. Laramie's wife and son were in stable conditions. Remember that.

So, fed up with their antics, Laramie finds a way to start getting the members of Harper's team killed one by one. Now, Detective Burton is on the case, who has clues that Laramie is the one responsible for these strange and fatal events, but in the end, Burton decides to look the other way. So, Laramie gets his revenge. Keeps his family. The paparazzi are put in their place…well. Harper is put in his place. The others are killed.

This brings me to the bitter after-taste of the picture. I get two messages from this picture. The first is very important and needed. It says, paparazzi are only interested in making money and not the lives of their subjects or journalistic integrity. Cool.

The next more disturbing message is - I committed murder and conspiracy to commit murder, but that's okay…I'M A CELEBRITY!

Now I am all for movie justice. As far as movies go, I accept eye for an eye as justice to bad guys in films. However, this picture was not eye for an eye. Laramie's family was fine. It would have been more fitting if Laramie put one guy in a coma and surgically removed another guy's spleen, cause that's all the harm his family received. The rest of the paparazzi just go to jail.

No one in his family perished in the accident. Let's say his wife died and his son was in a coma, and in the end the son comes out of it. Now he's lost his wife. I could accept the death of everyone in Harper's team; movie justice. And I could accept the detective looking the other way, because Laramie's wife was murdered. However, she wasn't. She had surgery and recovered fine. How about these guys are put in the hospital and end up in jail when the truth finally comes out? Any of these would have allowed me to accept the ending more than the way they actually ended it.

So with this unbalance of justice, in favor of the celebrity, the message ends up being, "Celebrities can kill people and get away with it, so watch out!"

Other than that, the picture was pretty entertaining. I have a couple of mild problems with time and space presented visually by TV director and makeup artist Paul Abascal, but nothing too harsh.

It was nice to see Cole Hauser (Good Will Hunting, Dazed and Confused) in a substantial leading role as Laramie. Hopefully now, he'll get parts where we can see if he can actually present a complex character. Something besides, "my motivation is…I want revenge."

I also enjoyed seeing Robin Tunney return to the screen (The Craft, Empire Records) as Laramie's wife. Dennis Farina (Midnight Run) was fun as Detective Burton and of course Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan) is always good to have around. He played, actually severely OVERPLAYED, the role of Harper.

If you rent this pic, make sure you watch for the extremely funny no-lines cameo from Mel Gibson, whose production company made "Paparazzi."

Benn - Where's the Humanity?