What there should have been in the bag was some BULBS for the lights as there wasn't any !!

Mediocre film with a few good bits with a story that only has any story and logic when it's laid out at the end !!

Before I watched The Bag Man, I looked through the reviews of this film on IMDb. These reviews were interesting because the film had a bipolar distribution—with mostly 1s and 2s as well as 9s and 10s—with very little in between. And, after watching the film, I could easily understand why the scores varied so widely.

The Bag Man begins with a scary mobster-type guy, Dragna (Robert De Niro—sporting a really bizarre hairdo),asking one of his minions, Jack (John Cusack) to retrieve a bag for him. He is told to then wait in room 13 of a hotel located in the middle of nowhere. There is also one other condition—that Jack never look into the bag.

When Jack arrives at the hotel, he's not only got the bag but got shot in the hand retrieving it. Oddly, they never showed this scene—Jack later tells Rivka (Rebecca Da Costa) what had occurred in this missing scene. As for Rivka, she appears to be a prostitute running from an insanely dangerous pimp and Jack inexplicably cares for her. This actually confused me, as Jack was a killing machine….so why would be agree to help this lady in distress? After all, though the course of the film, Jack kills LOTS of folks—some of them quite viciously—so why would he help her?! Soon after hooking up with Rivka, the two are assaulted by many different people and it continues that way until Dragna arrives to retrieve the bag. Oddly, at this point the film continues for another 20 minutes and you never actually learns what's in the bag—and by this point, Jack simply doesn't care! And, now that I think about it, it pretty much mirrored the way I was feeling.

During the course of the film, you will see Jack get urinated upon, a guy get his head smashed in, many brutal killings, a torture scene, an attempted rape, a guy smashed over the head repeatedly with a shovel and many, many other atrocities. Add to this the requisite number of obscenities and you have The Bag Man. This is undoubtedly why the reviews were so polarized. So, if you like extremely realistic violence and nastiness, you may enjoy the film—even with the inexplicably relationship between Jack and Rivka. However, I doubt if most folks would stick with this one, as it's light on plot and pretty much just one brutal scene after another after another.

While I did not enjoy this film in the least, at least it's an improvement for John Cusack because at least he is not playing Richard Nixon…like he did in last year's The Butler. This casting decision marks a rare misstep for Cusack. And, while he has a violent role in The Bag Man, it was an interesting stretch for the actor.

Jack (John Cusack) is instructed by Dragna (Robert De Niro) to pick up a bag and take it to a specific motel and to check into room 13. He is instructed not to look into the bag. Things go bad. We reach a point where he is in the room. He has a dead man in the trunk of his car which doesn't lock. His hand is bleeding where his cell phone was shot out from it. There are two undercover agents next door. He gets entangled with a six foot tall prostitute (Rebecca Da Costa) her one eyed pimp (Sticky Fingaz) and a Serbian midget (Martin Klebba). Cops seem to be everywhere and the motel is run by the creepy Crispin Glover who learned everything he knows about motel management from Norman Bates.

His boss calls him and tells him to read Hermann Hesse "Magister Ludi" which loosely relates to the mystery of the circus characters. Then things get weird.

This is a noir style mystery. There are two mysteries here. One is "What is with all the odd ball characters?" and the second one is "What is in the bag?" I will say I had them both figured out before they were revealed as it fit an oddball formula. However, I grew annoyed with the film, able to feel the frustration of Jack, but not in a good way.

The film has few characters. It has dark humorous elements added to this crime drama thriller. Indeed, the plot alone is darkly comical. The film has a lot of things going for it, and as a fan of the genre, it was able to grab me, but then kept letting me go. . Good rental for those who like a quirky noir mystery.

Parental Guide: F-bomb. Sex talk. No sex or nudity.