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88Though it's as schematic in construction as "Incendies," the film doesn't grind along to a ponderous plot; it's unnerving abstraction of its subject matter more daringly relays Villeneuve's view of the human cost of gender warfare.
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80Though the characters are fictional, Polytechnique hews close to the facts regarding the 1989 incident, down to its misogynistic Marc Lépine avatar (Gaudette) separating "feminist" coeds in a classroom.
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60Polytechnique smartly exposes the spectrum of misogyny without overplaying the connection between the two incidents. Which makes the concluding flash-forward scene all the more disappointing: Designed to give hope, it comes off as an emotional sop instead.
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60It is neither floridly melodramatic nor showily minimalist. The virtue - and also the limitation - of this movie is that it confronts senselessness and insists on remaining calm and sane.
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50As much a memorial as it is a docudrama and as such it will interest educators and students, and make for sober television. It's a pity, though, that more of an attempt wasn't made to understand the killer and explain such things as why no one apparently thought to phone for help or hit the fire alarm.
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50A weaker "Elephant," Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve's school-shooting drama Polytechnique nevertheless distinguishes itself by endeavoring to comprehend the 25-year-old man who murdered more than a dozen female students at Montreal's Polytechnique School in 1989.