good, but disturbing

Rating: Null/10 (16 October 2011)

This review is over a decade late, but I was recently thinking about my initial feelings when I saw the movie in the theater. I couldn't understand why everyone was so taken by it - and especially why they found it it uplifting. It's a strong movie, compelling, though provoking, but disturbing.
The only likable character in the movie gets killed, pretty much as soon as he, belatedly, gets his sh-- together. (Not a spoiler - he tells you so in the beginning.) And everybody else's lives are pretty much screwed by the end of the movie.
(Did other people actually like the amoral drug dealer kid, who only sees beauty in death? Or the spoiled self-absorbed teenage girl?)
The movie's message was well-taken, if not new: Carpe diem, and don't end up like these losers.