Remember that scene in The Matrix when Laurence Fishburne is getting the snot kicked out of him (literally)? Poor dude was hunched over in a chair; bloody, beaten -- you were hoping he'd make it out, but deep down inside you really wanted to give him a tissue. "Here man, wipe some of that sh*t off. Seriously, it's disgusting." Well, I immediately thought of that scene while reading about this latest bit of Fishburne casting news via Variety. According to them, he's signed on to star alongside Cole Hauser (he's the cute, clean-cut guy in films like The Cave, Paparazzi and 2 Fast 2 Furious) in Tortured, for Five Star Pictures, Insight Film Studios and Proud Mary Entertainment. (Here's hoping these two gents give Mary something to be proud of!)

Pic, which starts shooting this Monday in Vancouver, revolves around an FBI agent (Hauser) who goes undercover and gets in good with "the world's most powerful crime syndicate." However, once he's in the loop, his bosses assign him the task of torturing one of their accountants (Fishburne). I'm not sure if FBI agents are allowed to torture people while undercover, but I am sure the situation will provide plenty of juicy conflict. "Hey man, I'm going to whip you with these chains. Since, technically, I'm using them for work, can I write that off?" Nolan Lebovitz (whose last big-screen credit was on something called Dr. Benny) will direct off his own script. What I want to know is at what point do we throw our hands up and admit that the whole torture genre has run its course? Are you folks still interested in this stuff? Does it still scare you?

We've had the Dream Team, the Rat Pack, the Brat Pack and as Scott Weinberg rued last October, the Splat Pack. But has there ever been a group title for the guys behind-behind the scenes in film? I feel like we should come up with something for the crew of Saw. After wrapping Saw IV soon, a lot of the same crew will then move on to a new horror flick called Twisted, but that's not all. From there, they will move on to that horror Opera flick that Erik Davis mentioned way back in October -- Repo! The Genetic Opera. So, perhaps the Bloody Bunch? The Gang of Gore?

So this picture in the middle, Tortured, is a psychological revenge thriller from the pen of Marek Posival. This is his first penned feature (his lone other writing credit is a short from 2000 called Hold-Up), although he's done a lot of TV work as a line producer and assistant director. The film will be directed by Rob Lieberman, who has done a bunch of television work himself, and believe it or not, the last two features he helmed were Fire in the Sky and D3: The Mighty Ducks. Tortured is about an upper-middle-class couple whose life is destroyed when a pedophile kidnaps and kills their only child. Seething with revenge, they kidnap the killer. Although Variety says nothing else about the plot, I think the title probably says it all. And, considering the crew that will be working behind the scenes, my guess is that the torture will be very, very gory.