This very well directed movie starts off with three young boys playing in one of their neighbourhood streets. One of them is then abducted in front of his friends and later abused by a couple of paedophiles until he escapes a few days later. Many years later, the abused kid is now Tim Robbins with a family of his own. He’s fine physically but the scars of abuse remain. The other two kids, Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon are local thug and cop respectively. Everything seems fine until Sean Penns’ daughter is found murdered. The same night, Tim Robbins comes home late with blood on his shirt. And so the story unfolds.
As the movie progresses, each one of the lead men get more suspicious of the other. Tim Robbins looks crazier with each passing day. What’s he hiding? Is he disturbed? Kevin Bacon needs to solve this case and exorcise his own demons at the same time. Will he finally make peace with himself? And Sean Penn, the distraught father seems to want to take matters into his own hands. But why does’nt he trust anyone? And each one has secrets. Secrets that they can’t reveal to anyone under any circumstances, not even to their own families. But as the search for the murderer goes on and the pressure starts to mount, one of them resorts to desperate measures to restore a twisted form of justice.
The storyline tends to sweep around the lives of the various characters in this small town. The three lead men play their roles to perfection. So do the supporting cast including Lawrence Fishburne as a cop. All in all, the movie concentrates more on characterisation; with the story unfolding slowly in the background until all the pieces fall into place at the very end. But alas, it’s too late by then (I won’t tell you why- go see it for yourself).
My friend and I rented the VCD and he absolutely hated the ending saying it made the movie totally devoid of any hope at all. I agree with him about the ’hope’ part. Right from the first scene when that kid gets abducted, you kind of know what path the story is going to follow. The first scene in the movie somewhat gives you a feeler of what the rest of the movie will be like. I do think that this aspect of the movie makes it realistic, however.