(Spoilers Included!!)
This is not a "feature film", its one of those "movie of the week" that was done on a small budget to tell a compelling story.
The story is a bad one that ends up worse. A very pretty young teen female, with a washed up middle aged mother who lives in a trailer environment, gets sexually abused by her "almost married for a year" husband. When the daughter tells her about the abuse and asks her mother to have this man leave, the mother makes the daughter feel at fault and does not ask the man to leave, but for HER to. Her life gets worse, no one -- and I strongly repeat -- no one cares to morally assist this girl. She then deals with more awful men and a bottom of the barrel life just trying to survive on what little sense she's got, until she is involved in murder.
Now a personal note: I feel that when you kill someone, you have to pay the consequences. It DOES NOT matter what age you are. While it is sad that this teen, her life, and how she makes decisions fell the wrong way, she participated in murder.
That being said, should she have gotten a death penalty in my view? In this case, no. Should she have gotten life in prison with out the possibility of parole? In this case..no. But that is the point, for us to search inside ourselves and understand what WAS best for this teen --in this case. There is no one ideal/one fit for everybody and everything. Jail and death are not the "end all beat all" of all crimes committed. A life was taken -- never lose sight on that, but why that life was taken is of importance and justice for that life being taken is also just as important.
But this person's life was taken too. Although not physically dead..she was being killed for a long time which led her to believe that committing death on another was her only 'rational' option led on by another irrational human being. So what do you do? How do you handle this kind of criminal offense? What is best for her, society, justice to the dead? That is the question that we are still trying to answer.
This film is as good as it gets for "TV". Don't expect more out of it. It does what it needs to do, provoke thought and conversation. Juliette Lewis and Brad Pitt do a fine job, it's worth a peek.
This is not a "feature film", its one of those "movie of the week" that was done on a small budget to tell a compelling story.
The story is a bad one that ends up worse. A very pretty young teen female, with a washed up middle aged mother who lives in a trailer environment, gets sexually abused by her "almost married for a year" husband. When the daughter tells her about the abuse and asks her mother to have this man leave, the mother makes the daughter feel at fault and does not ask the man to leave, but for HER to. Her life gets worse, no one -- and I strongly repeat -- no one cares to morally assist this girl. She then deals with more awful men and a bottom of the barrel life just trying to survive on what little sense she's got, until she is involved in murder.
Now a personal note: I feel that when you kill someone, you have to pay the consequences. It DOES NOT matter what age you are. While it is sad that this teen, her life, and how she makes decisions fell the wrong way, she participated in murder.
That being said, should she have gotten a death penalty in my view? In this case, no. Should she have gotten life in prison with out the possibility of parole? In this case..no. But that is the point, for us to search inside ourselves and understand what WAS best for this teen --in this case. There is no one ideal/one fit for everybody and everything. Jail and death are not the "end all beat all" of all crimes committed. A life was taken -- never lose sight on that, but why that life was taken is of importance and justice for that life being taken is also just as important.
But this person's life was taken too. Although not physically dead..she was being killed for a long time which led her to believe that committing death on another was her only 'rational' option led on by another irrational human being. So what do you do? How do you handle this kind of criminal offense? What is best for her, society, justice to the dead? That is the question that we are still trying to answer.
This film is as good as it gets for "TV". Don't expect more out of it. It does what it needs to do, provoke thought and conversation. Juliette Lewis and Brad Pitt do a fine job, it's worth a peek.