Roman Polanski’s films are nearly always defined by confined, hostile environments: the boat in A Knife in the Water, the remote island mansion in The Ghost Writer, a corrupt, noir Los Angeles in Chinatown. In Polanski’s latest movie, Carnage, the action is restricted to a single Brooklyn apartment, an innocuous setting that becomes something of a narrative prison. The irony here is that the film’s New York location serves as a reminder that Polanski himself is a man confined – or restricted, at least, from entering or working in the United States. This New York was recreated in a Parisian studio, and that realization is significant in that it makes the setting of the film, defined by its emotional realism, a self-consciously fictional space.

Given the singularity of its setting, it is not hard to guess that Carnage has stage roots; it is based on the play God of Carnage by French playwright Yamina Reza. As a result, Carnage often feels like a filmed play, stilted and lacking dynamic, but the confined, stage-like environment also adding a layer of surreality to the proceedings. Even the attempted escapes from the apartment are thwarted with weak excuses for reentry, lending the confinement a self-consciously staged character. We are continually made aware that but for the façade of dramatic fiction, the prolonged, unexpected visit shared by the movie’s two couples, who come from dissimilar social circles, would never take place.

The apartment belongs to Michael and Penelope Longstreet (John C. Reily and Jodie Foster). Michael is a jolly, affable blue collar sort who runs a plumbing supply store. Penelope is a writer with an art historical bent. They are visited by Alan and Nancy Cowan (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet). Alan is a lawyer who is constantly pounding his thumbs on his Blackberry and taking calls. The well-dressed, if easily frazzled Nancy reeks of bourgeois pretention.

The couples come together because the Cowan’s son has hit the Longstreet’s son with a stick during a playground dispute. Even though we are told the Longstreet’s son was pretty badly injured (losing teeth), both couples are trying to find an agreeable, reasonable, and passion-less resolution to the conflict. The film opens with a shot of a computer screen as the four adults collaborate on an official legal statement about the event. A small dispute over word choice is our first indication that tension is rumbling beneath the feigned decency. As suppressed animosity bursts forth, hospitality is nonetheless awkwardly extended throughout in the form of pie, cigars, scotch.

Carnage’s dramatic arc consists of one long, dramatic crescendo. Frictions are created by seeming absurdities. A passing story about how Michael disposed of the family pet, a Guinea Pig, in a city street is really just told to fill awkward silence, but it becomes a point of contention for Nancy, who begins to see the nerdy, rosy-cheeked father as sinister. The continued interruptions of Alan’s cell phone slowly reveal that he is working to keep the lid on a scandal that has embroiled a pharmaceutical company. Penelope’s fascination with African genocide is characterized by Alan as politically correct hypocrisy. What started as an open-minded attempt at peacemaking divulges into a vomiting of ill will — replete with actual vomit.

The underlying morale that pervades Carnage is a cynically Hobbesian view of human nature: civilization is a thin veneer that covers our otherwise brutish inclinations. And Carnage’s fun comes precisely from its manipulation of a commonplace scenario – a simple visit – to allow for the inner beast to rage out of its cage. It is precisely this bad behavior that makes Carnage so enjoyable to watch, something like inverse sentimentality, simply rendered and one dimensional, but satisfying in the bluntness of its ill will.

On the surface, Polanski’s latest film lacks a cinematic nuance that usually defines his work. Many of the director’s usual tropes are absent: mystery, a conspiring hostile agnosticism. But what Carnage forfeits in its expansiveness it gains through its close focus, as Polanski, at times, seems to be getting in touch with his inner Woody Allen. The troupe of actors all dangle their personae on the edge between character and caricature, turning in performances with fizzy energy. The intrigue that propels the action consists of the shifting allegiances between the individuals, occasional taking sides against or allied with their spouse or gender. In the farcically inescapable, well-decorated living room, relationships quickly devolve into survival of the wittiest.