intelligent drama to make you think

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2004)

If you don't like to think, then do not see this movie. A friend and I rented this and talked about it for another two hours after it was over. Our conclusion was that its major theme was less about violence and more about the conspiracy or spiral of silence that develops in closed groups or societies. This simple crime story develops into a Shakespearian drama which makes the mindful viewer question their own silences. The discussion with my friend ranged from literary allusions to early American New England writers like Cooper and Hawthorne to the questionable ethics of P.T. Barnum in the Jacksonian era to the silence that enable the rise of Fascism in pre-WWII Germany. If you enjoy films that stimulate your intellectual curiosity and propel you into further inquiry, then this film is for you.