What a Great Film. Everyone Should See This

Rating: 9/10 (28 April 2011)

It's amazing when I hear people say they didn't like this movie - one, no one ever says that, and two, it's a cinematic masterpiece if I've ever seen one. Everything flows together in a way that only the Scorceses and Spielbergs can pull off. I really felt connections to the characters as they developed, something that has been all but lost in modern filmmaking.
Derek Vinyard's life is chronicled in such a way that you can almost draw parallels to your own; I thought about all of the things I've done that hurt other people, which in comparison were hardly that bad, of course, but the fact that even someone as evil and brainwashed as himself can be redeemed and be a small instrument of what is good about humanity is enlightening, if not humbling.
Detractors of the film claim that his transformation is too extreme to be taken seriously, a product of amateur screen writing and a false sense of morality, but I argue just the opposite. No matter how far someone has fallen, there is always a glimmer of hope, and sometimes it just takes a new form of stimuli for them to realize it.