PATHOLOGY: Deadmeat for Censors

PATHOLOGY (medical thriller)
Cast: Milo Ventimiglia, Lauren Lee Smith, Michael Weston, Alyssa Milano and Keir O'Donnell
Director: Marc Schoelermann
Time: 92 mins
Rating: * 1/2 (out of 4)

THE BIG DEAL: 'Pathology', which is about how a bunch of medical students fool around with cadavers, try to commit the perfect murder and fornicate at every chance they get, is actually 'dead meat' for our censors. It has lots of blood-and-gore, drug-taking, as well as kinky sex-and-fleshy scenes. Now, guess which category would be snipped out in Malaysia?

However, for Alyssa Milano fans who may want to rush out and get a DVD just to see her in the buff, forget it. She keeps her clothes on all the time in this mainly name-dropper role.

THE SKINNY: Harvard grad Dr Ted Grey (Milo Ventimiglia of 'Heroes' fame) gets an internship in a hospital morgue, and hangs around with Dr Jake Gallo (Michael Weston) who is involved in medical pranks. Soon, Jake devices a challenge: each of them will murder someone useless and the others will have to work out how the murder is done.

The gang also smoke crack while performing after-hour autopsies and there's a subplot about Ted's sexual entanglement with a fellow intern Juliette Bath (Lauren Lee Smith from The L-Word) despite being married to the posh-looking Gwen (Milano). Over time, egos clash, jealousies emerge and...

HITS & MISSES: The far-fetched plot notwithstanding, this lame duck of a B-grade thriller treads weakly into soft-porn territory. Plotholes are aplenty, none of the characters are likeable enough to root for and it looks as if all director Marc Scholermann wanted to do was to pile up on the gore and the sex. A lot of corpses get carved up through model work or CGI, but whatever suspense it promises is discarded by a script that glorifies butchery.

THE LOWDOWN: For those CSI fans who can't get enough of bodies being sliced and mangled.