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This suspenseful, beautifully acted Dickensian drama forces us to confront our own bloodlust: do we root for the teen to win a moral victory or to beat the bad guy to a pulp?
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75Director Mikael Hafstrom - the gentleman responsible for last year's Jennifer Aniston bomb "Derailed" - keeps us guessing as he confidently builds suspense.
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75A gripping story of one teen's rebellion against his peers' sadistic abuse.
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70Although Evil eventually suffers from its heavy-handed treatment of its subject, it is a well-made and engrossing melodrama.
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70Håfström doesn't soft-pedal the abuse meted out by either his antihero or his nemeses, which will disturb audience members who want a clean demarcation between good guys and bad.
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70Evil is not, as the title would suggest, a horror film, at least not a conventional one. Based on the autobiographical novel by Jan Guillou and set in the mid-1950s, the film relates the experiences of a troubled young man who's enrolled into a hidebound private school.
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70A thoroughly serious film, full of vivid details, but also a relentlessly serious one that requires Mr. Wilson to spend a great deal of time looking disconsolate.
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67It's more about giving rich bullies the same comeuppance afforded to sneering wardens with bullwhips, and on those superficial grounds, it's reasonably gripping.
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Bullying is not easy to watch on screen, even--or perhaps especially--if the viewer had the fortune to avoid either side of the bully/bullied equation.
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63This didactic drama is set safely in the past and says nothing about the culture of conformity at all costs that hasn't been said before.
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63Extremely watchable, even if it never goes as deep as it should.
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60The movie is as blunt as its title. It portrays such behavior as "evil" without offering any deep insights or revelations, beyond handing out the plot equivalent of a lollipop at the end of the movie as compensation for the vicarious anguish.
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50Hafstrom never finds the shades in his morality tale, so while Wilson is an intensely charismatic actor, all he can do is respond to relentless, escalating tortures. It's immensely unpleasant for him, and, frankly, not a whole lot better for us.
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50Is this an allegory against blind deference to fascism? It might be, but the root-for-the-Aryan-jock dramatics seem mildly fascist themselves.
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Director Mikael Hafström's dramatic sense is so pedestrian and snail's-pace obvious -- since this 2003 feature, he's made the leap to Hollywood with the plodding thriller "Derailed" -- one starts biding time for the inevitable retributive smackdown that will save our hero from the gantlet of draggy high-mindedness about counteracting fascism with stony resolve.
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JH10
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JimG.6