This new version by writer-director Tom Kalin plays it up, sometimes in ways that are fairly disturbing, as when he seems to linger on the ways the dominant Loeb was able to control the more submissive Leopold by using sex as a weapon. The murder of Bobby Frank is seen not as a criminal act, but as a sexual adventure that got out of hand. Kalin does not use the argument that society is to blame, that because homosexuality was outlawed, Leopold and Loeb were somehow forced into the lapse of sanity which led to the murder. He is simply an evil person. Leopold, on the other hand, is a weak one, whose relationship with Loeb is complex.
Sex is a part of it.
Later in a long life, he tried to redeem himself, in prison and on parole, and there was never the sense that he was as essentially evil as Loeb. Loeb was incapable of the act, and Leopold incapable of the desire. This is the kind of movie that inspires discussion afterwards. It is probably true that more people fall in Leopold's category than Loeb's, which is why he has always drawn more sympathy from students of the case. It is easier and more reassuring to imagine being seduced into evil, than to imagine not even knowing what evil is.