This film premiered in Chicago at the 2006 Chicago International Film Festival

 "Soul Kicking" is an excruciating and demoralizing exercise in cinematic sado-masochism disguised as an art film.   

It might possibly be the most worthless and aesthetically bankrupt film I have ever seen at the Chicago International Film Festival. This film is so horrendously awful that it makes "Tamara: Cat from Outer Space" look like "The Third Man." 

The main character Tamis (Errikos Litsis) is a pathetic anti-hero figure in the tradition of Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis" or the main character in Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground." 

He is a well meaning but ineffectual buffoon who continually suffers indignities and setbacks that occur because he is unlucky and makes bad choices.  His family hates him and he never sees his daughter. He is insulted by nearly everyone who meets him. The series of demeaning and coarse exchanges obliterate his already low self-esteem.  The film takes a peculiar satisfaction in stripping him of his dignity, and we are supposed to be amused at his intense suffering and self-destructive passivity. 

His boss is a tyrant that enjoys berating him; his trampy wife is having a public affair with a loan shark; and his brother exhibits no compassion towards him whatsoever.  We can only hope that he will eventually stick up for himself, but most viewers will probably end up feeling as let down as I did. 

If "Soul Kicking" has any aesthetic value, I could not find it, and watching the film was one of the worst experiences I had in a theater in a long time.  

It took an enormous amount of self-control just for me to sit through the whole thing, and I saw it for free.  The film almost ruined my evening, and it is about as enjoyable as your average root canal or anal probe. Almost any entertainment choice on the planet would be preferable to "Soul Kicking."