And the moral of the story is....

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2005)

The first point I wish to make is if you have not seen this movie, avoid spoilers like the plague.
This being the 100th anniversary of Einstein's theory of relativity, I hope he won't mind if I apply it to the evaluation of motion pictures.
Having sat through, more or less, such drivel as Anchorman and Eurotrip, I find it difficult to understand why some ingrates would bash a competent, intelligent movie. Or perhaps they find Anchorman intellectually stimulating? I suspect the real problem is deciding what category to put this movie in. It doesn't really fit in any. There is even, dare I say it, ambiguity in the movie.
But once you figure out what the point of the movie is, or put another way, what the moral of the story is, it starts to fall into place.
So here is the spoiler.
The moral of the story is that the problem is not society. It is people.
In other words, society doesn't kill people. People kill people.
And you get nut cases in small towns as well as big cities; in modern society as well as in olden days. The 20th century didn't invent murder, after all.
Trying to escape from the evil cities to a simpler time doesn't solve all your problems.
I remember the time a computer programmer who moved to the small, isolated (no road access)town of McCarthy, went on a rampage, killing half the town before he was finally stopped. There are plenty of small villages in Alaska that have had to deal with psychopathic bullies.
The extras with the movie are interesting. The director went to great lengths to immerse the cast in the historical character of the era, which is ironic given the reality of the story. I wish more directors would do this with historical pieces.
And finally, any movie with Sigourney Weaver in it can't be all bad. Not that this one is.
All of the cast does a first-rate job.
The bottom line: I enjoyed the movie. And the movie sticks with you for a while, giving you something to think about. This is more than I can say about most movies these days.