Lazy work could have been so much better

Rating: 4/10 (22 December 2004)

I stayed with this film for it's length but ultimately it left me disappointed ******** SPOILER ******** Dave - a child abuse victim - abducted as a child - comes home at 3.00am one morning covered in blood, his and someone else's. He concocts a story that he was mugged and may have killed his mugger. His wife offers to deal with his clothes and cover up for him... She's a good wife. She understands it was self defense.
But the truth is that Dave actually spotted a Paedophile with a young boy... Pulled him out of the car getting physical... and was then attacked by the pedophile with a knife... Dave beats him to death. The truth is actually more understandable given his history... So why did he lie to his wife and why does he throughout the film allow this lie to continue? Even when his wife and others then suspect he has killed a friend's daughter.
Psychologically one might argue that the abuse victim hated himself so much that he could not admit the truth. One suspects that in the book we might know what Dave was doing in the area at that time. Was it a known haunt for men to pick up boys? Was he horrifically fascinated by such acts and therefore felt he deserved to suffer? Victims often feel responsible for the crimes committed against them.... But no... That's too deep. He didn't tell his wife the truth because there was over two hours of movie to go through. And if he told her the truth we wouldn't be able to suspect him of being twisted enough to kill his friends daughter... Who coincidentally gets murdered the same night.
And this is how the film is constructed... The reveals must happen in dramatic order therefore we cannot have the characters behaving believably otherwise it might upset the order of the reveal. So Dave can lose everything - his son - his wife - his life... He's damaged goods so who cares? No need to explain.
The police can ignore evidence and procedure... because they too must play the game of suspecting the wrong people at first. And then finding out that the girl's death was - once again - purely coincidental. At least this is what the father is told. Although a long scene where the dead girl's boyfriend accuses his brother of doing it because he was jealous of his brothers love for her is played out before and at least has some sense to it... But it actually seems to be the mute brothers friend who may have pulled the trigger since he has the gun which was used by the brothers father in an unsolved robbery in 1982. Confused? Never mind... we'll have some long lingering close ups of an emoting Sean Penn and it will all make sense in the end. And we'll be so stunned by the acting that we won't need to worry about little things like the plot making sense.
For me Kevin Bacon's performance was the only truthful one... But then his character got saddled with a subplot that was so thin no one bothered to let us know what it was... Wife/ partner has run off to NY and phone's him everyday but says nothing. We don't know how long this has gone on for... But at the end of the film she calls... he says sorry, she says sorry and they are reunited along with their baby daughter in time to watch a parade and play happy families???? We are also treated to a Lady Macbeth style speech by Jimmy's second wife late on in the film that was probably very significant in the book but because we have only seen her fleetingly throughout the movie has no impact.
All in all shoddy lazy work.