Peter Ashlock

I've seen this film twice and been equally impressed both times. The big American cast does all a Hollywood production could to make it good. It is good, but now I want to find the original to see what made it win an Oscar. What I liked was the superficial formula of a police thriller actually being more about the nature of obsession, resentment, class and how hard it is to let go of a horrible traumatic event (like the death of your child) and the devious ways in which the formal justice system is ultimately self serving for a cadre of professional bureaucrats who are more concerned with headlines than humanity. Set in the era of just post 9/11 paranoia with Muslims, the otherwise conventional murder investigation into an old crime has numerous psychological labyrinths that only bring you to the factual conclusion at the end with the kind of result that would make anyone ask themselves if they had gone too far in the clinging to an old wound before they made peace with themselves, since after the fact, death cannot be reversed. It is a very thoughtful film with an excellent cast.

This film has the feel of real life, messy, emotional, frustrating, embarrassing, humiliating and contradicting all we believe and hope for, it is about the kinds of events and feelings real people have, not super heroes in billion dollar budget movies. I really liked it for that, I believed the words coming out of the characters mouths and the events that took place. I ended up wanting to know what the real events were that allegedly took place to generate the story. It is not the first time I have heard of people (usually men) having two families, someone inevitably ends up bruised or worse. These folks seemed to be somewhere in the middle, with real people. I really liked the film very much. A breath of fresh air!