Uses sexual child abuse to advance a violent and dark plot

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2004)

This movie uses the topic of sexual child abuse to advance a violent and dark plot. It never explores what really happens to the victims after the abuse is over nor what motivates the abusers. Nor does it involve the most common kinds of child abuse cases, abuse by family members, step-parents, or close family friends. Instead it employs a Silence-of-the-Lambs type of abduction/abuse scenario to achieve maximum melodramatic effect. It depicts child molestation as only happening out on the street rather than in our homes. That is, in fact, a much more disturbing reality. If the director, Clint Eastwood, is capable to showing the fragilities of children and the permanent damage that this abuse can cause, he failed in this case. The string of coincidences in the plot coupled with improbable dialog makes the movie a depressing and stupid exercise in depicting the darkest of human emotions. Example: When Jimmy (Sean Penn) says he does not believe Dave's (Tim Robbins) confession that he murdered a child molester and not Jimmy's daughter, Dave never tells Jimmy where he hid the molester's body which would have proved he did not kill Jimmy's daughter, been easily checked as it was only a few blocks away and would have saved his life from Jimmy's vengeance. This simply did not make sense.