Stag Details

This is one of those films that strives to put you into the shoes of the characters to see how you would react in their situation. And what a situation! A group of pals hold a stag party, but in a haze of booze and drugs one of the strippers they've hired for the night is accidentally killed. “The life of the party just died” as the poster splendidly put it. What do they do? Call the police or attempt to cover it up. The film chillingly explores the question as to what extremes will people go to save themselves. Andrew McCarthy is in fine form as the most unscrupulous of the bunch, though Mario Van Peebles almost pips him. The Christian Slater/Cameron Diaz black comedy Very Bad Things followed soon after and covered identical ground, but where that was played for gross-out laughs, Gavin Wilding's film adopts a dramatically dark narrative and ends up being an ambitious if flawed moral tale of conscience and loyalty.