Grade: A-

Verdict: Gives you a rush and a hangover at the same time.

Details: Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly. Unrated, but contains intense scenes of violence, drug use, nudity and sex. One hour, 42 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Harrowing enough to make you lose your Thanksgiving turkey, “Requiem for a Dream” is director Darren Aronofsky's proof that his first flick, “*,” was no high-adrenalin fluke. Paced like a series of whiplash accidents, here's a feel-bad movie that creates both the rush of a substance-abuse high, and the rotten morning after. Often at the same time.

So get this straight: “Requiem” is a masterfully done movie that few people will enjoy (or even tolerate). It doesn't want to please you. It doesn't want to make you happy. There are no Whos, Dalmatians or Schwarzenegger clones in sight, and the movie takes you to a hell Adam “Little Nicky” Sandler can't even imagine. So be prepared, or be somewhere else.

OK, now that we got that out of the way. . . .

Based on a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby Jr. (“Last Exit to Brooklyn”), “Requiem” follows the downward spiral of a handful of dreamers in Coney Island. There's Harry (Jared Leto), an amiable guy with a history of pawning his mother's television to pay for his drug habit.

His mom is Sara (Ellen Burstyn), a wattle-necked widow living in melancholy retirement in a high-rise, getting through the day mesmerized by a high-decibel, self-empowerment TV guru (Christopher McDonald). After she gets a call from a scout for his show, telling her she's been picked as a potential guest, Sara frets because she's grown too plump for her favorite red dress. So she finds a doctor renowned for the effectiveness of his diet pills. (When he enters the examining room, the physician never even looks her in the face — a touch that neatly sums up Sara's invisible status as an aging widow.)

The pills work. The pounds melt away. But that's only the start of Sara's problems. Meanwhile, Harry and his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) make love, get high and dream of owning their own store. Harry and his pal Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) come up with a plan to finance that dream: All they need is “a pound of pure,” heroin they can dilute and resell for maximum profit.

The future looks sunny for all four characters. But they're heading into a midnight of self-destruction and waste. Aronofsky orchestrates their fall like a piece of music, a horrific chamber suite. (Appropriately, the movie lunges forward on a propulsive, moody score by Clint Mansell, performed by the Kronos Quartet.) It's the story's final, crushing irony that the characters' addictions, begun as a way to feel less alone in the world, are what isolate them from one another by the end.

Aronofsky films “Requiem” so subjectively, it's a kind of “You Are There” tour of a strung-out mind. He uses shock edits, lightning-quick cuts and montages, bursts of sudden violence and hallucinatory sequences that are tonally lodged somewhere between creepy and funny. When Sara complains that “everything's all mixed up,” Aronofsky puts us in her shoes, using a fisheye camera lens and exaggerated sound to show us her world, a paranoid, amphetamine-powered circus. You know he's doing something right when Sara's refrigerator becomes as menacing a presence as Freddy Krueger.

Burstyn anchors the film with a brave, raw performance. She may be partly hidden under fat suits and old-age makeup, but she lays her emotions bare. When she tells her son, “I'm lonely, I'm old,” Sara seems to be hearing herself say the truth for the first time. It's a heartbreaking moment.

As Harry, Leto dropped weight for the film, taking on the ravaged look of a junkie. He's OK in the role, but he's almost too lightweight (so to speak) a presence. Connelly, whose blend of intelligence and sensuality becomes more textured with every film, is very effective here. Probably the most surprising performance, though, comes from Wayans. Switching from his usual comic roles, he makes a compelling dramatic actor.

The sole weakness of “Requiem for a Dream” is the same thing that gives it its savage, tragic rush. Once the characters start tumbling toward bottom, the movie becomes a one-way journey. It can feel exhausting. But film lovers with a high threshold for unpleasantness will get a contact high from Aronofsky's muscular manipulations of imagery and editing. Using every tool at his disposal, he creates a beautiful bummer.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service