In the heart of some grimy English city plagued by the ultra violence there lives a repulsively birthmarked young man - I'm going to be sick - who has a vaguely heart shaped blemish on his face and is thus rightfully ostracised by his fellows and shunned by the fair sex. A sinister stranger offers him an opportunity to be rid of this unspeakably horrid facial blight - my god the elephant man would hurl if he saw this kid's face - but to what lengths will he go to become...heartless. 'Cause it looks sort of like a heart.

How can we even look at the screen! Sorry, in case my thrusts sarcasm missed the mark let me reiterate: the guy has a facial blemish. And if you look up the actor on imdb he's on these "young hotties" lists that seem to be the true purpose of that site. Honestly it took me a while to even realise the movie was trying to make a big deal out of his birthmark.

I'm saying the movie gaffes its premise. I'm meant to feel sorry for a guy who's better looking than I am? It's utterly laughable when he starts whingeing about how no girl will ever make babies with him. Okay maybe he'd get teased a bit in kindergarten but pretty soon he'd have chicks hanging all over him. Hells having a pink heart on his face would probably make girls dig him all the more. If they want me to buy into his angst they need to give him a genuinely revolting deformity, but yeah right, they don't even let fat people in movies.

I'm sorry but it galls my arse. Movies do this all the time; put some glasses on a stunningly beautiful woman and tie her hair up and oh my god she's so ugly, or smear her makeup a bit and have her act quirky and oh no now she's craaaazy! If I were an actual - heaven forbid - unattractive person I think I'd be a bit offended by this production. I mean the movie is perpetuating the very thing it's apparently making a statement about, 'cause it's so not okay to be ugly that an ugly guy can't even be in a movie about an ugly guy.

My god I met this poor kid once...picture the face from a Picasso painting, medieval underbite, novelty gag hillbilly teeth - half of which were black and possibly fizzing, encased in pallid flab and topped with a shock of bright brown oil and dandruff caked hair that instantly conjured an image of shit on white toilet paper. Tom Savini couldn't make an uglier kid. It really wasn't funny either. He wore it. Barely said a word to anyone.

In a movie he'd be played by someone with offbeat good looks, and some Winona Ryder looking chick would find out he had a heart of gold and make with the love, but in the much less heartwarming real world that kid is probably just going to have a rum life. And it's not even society's issue; you absolutely cannot call anyone vain for not wanting to snuggle up to that. There's no one to blame and nothing for it - just the sort of dark sad dismal shit this movie was going for and might have made people think about had it put something more repulsive than the equivalent of a tribal tattoo on the guy's face.

But, if you can suspend disbelief enough to pretend he's not a magazine cover idol it's a decent movie. It's got a slightly surreal vibe as the city descends into anarchy, and the obligatory get more than you bargained for when you deal with the devil business was pretty entertaining. Brutal heart cutting-out murder there. Hey that's like the title.

And it's absolutely cathartic when the kid tears his way out of his old flesh. That's the movie's moment, showing both how desperately he loathes the old life he's sloughing off and the exultaion he feels when he looks into the mirror and sees that his face is finally... EXACTLY THE SAME. Sorry! I'll quit harping on that...eventually.

I can dig the ending, where dead flashback dad tells the kid to value his unique perspective and the fantastic and often terrible things he'll see going through life as a total heartthrob. Yeah movie makes it too easy. Really though I do appreciate the sentiment. I don't want to come off like some crazier-than-thou whiner wearing a "you don't know what it's like" badge; everybody has a hard life in one way or another, except maybe the great Ringo Starr, and everybody has a different story, except maybe the people in syfy movies. Being fucked up or hideous or traumatised does not make a person deeper and more interesting than anyone else. But it is true that those who are out on the fringe for whatever reason will experience a few things that most good folks only see dramatised in this sort of fiction. I mean we all like Jodie Foster, but only one of us liked her enough to shoot the president.

So thank you for that movie. Now can I please stop typing about it so I can try to forget I ever saw that kid's shockingly grotesque and abhorrent beauty mark.