Reprehensible Drivel

Rating: 4/10 (6 July 2008)

*** SPOILER WARNING ***
So in Boston it's apparently legal to commit murder as long as the guy on the receiving end is a piece of low-life scum. A short way into the investigation into a child abduction the police and private investigator track down a double-crossing drug-runner who's been strapped to a chair and beaten to a bloody pulp before being killed. They have a very strong suspicion as to who did it. They know where he is, the detective even meets him face to face to discuss the more important issue of the kidnap, with the police waiting outside. They don't bother to question him about the murder, let alone make an arrest or apparently even open a case of homicide. Later the detective himself shoots in the back of the head an unarmed man posing no current threat. The recipient of the bullet is a known paedophile however and it seems that he has been abusing and recently killed a kidnapped seven year old boy. The detective openly admits to committing murder in conversation with a senior police officer. Everyone knows about it, his girlfriend says she's proud of him for it. Again there is no questioning, no arrest, no mention of any charges being brought as even a possibility. I can only conclude that in Boston it is legal to murder someone as long as they are well known to be a piece of low-life scum.
Ah, but these police had reason not to do the things by the book as they are up to no good themselves. That misses the point. The detective believes them to be on-side and yet doesn't raise an eyebrow, nor does anyone else at the fact that a murder in some cases seems to be less of a crime than jaywalking.
The story is the most ludicrous that I have ever come across in a supposedly serious film. In an amazing twist the kidnapping turns out to have been an extra-curricular operation by the Boston police themselves conducted at the very highest level - the uncle of the girl, the senior cop, his sidekick and the chief commissioner of police were all in it together and have been leading the private dick up the garden the path from the very beginning. Scriptwriters take note - you can turn any story on its head by this simple device  just have a lot of the supposedly trusted people that the main character was relying on for most of his information turn out to have been telling lies. And why did they do it? To give a better life to the young girl than the one that her biological but wayward, neglectful and impecunious mother was providing. The now retired chief commissioner and his wife, who lost their own daughter to a killing, have become her parents. One slight problem here I feel  how were they to explain the sudden appearance of their lovely new blonde daughter (who would be presumably be highly coveted by thousands of the eager adoptive couples of a more likely age?) and one who looks so uncannily like the very girl whose face has been plastered on posters and broadcast to the nation, whose disappearance the commissioner led the investigation into? Or are they to retire from society completely, keep her away from school, friends, all social intercourse in case she mentions a previous mother she can perfectly well remember? Perhaps one crazy individual or couple could overlook such niceties, but three senior long-serving police officers with presumably massive pensions at risk to go along with an escapade that is so fraught and liable to discovery? Yet this is not even the final absurdity. We are asked to believe not just that this could happen but that when the detective finally confronts the kidnapping top cop they have a moral debate about who's right and who's wrong, making elegant speeches to each other about what's best for the girl now and in the future, and not only this but the detective's girlfriend takes the kidnapper's side, and so strongly that she walks out on him and ends their relationship when he insists on turning the ex-commissioner over to the law and returning the girl to her mother.
Praise for the actors in coping valiantly with this drivel and turning in good performances cannot be too high. The first half hour or so is quite gripping, before the first faintly ludicrous interview with the framed gangster suspect. After this it is all downhill  moving ever further from any possible reality and with ever longer tedious speeches between characters supposedly grappling with the moral dilemmas that the contrived storyline has thrown up. Rarely in the history of cinema has such silly and faintly repellent rubbish been taken so seriously and been so highly praised. In choosing the theme of the ultimate crime  the abduction and possible abuse and murder of an innocent defenceless young child  the film-makers perhaps thought that they themselves could get away with murder or at least daylight robbery  the audience so cowed by the enormity of the topic that they take collective leave of their critical faculties and accept any old nonsense at face value. It seems they were right.