Dispatches (TV Series) Unforgiven: The Boys Who Murdered James Bulger (2001) User Reviews

Should 10-Year-Old Killers Be Given A Second Chance?

[sundayatdusk-97859 · 5/10 · 17 July 2023]

This documentary is currently streaming at Amazon under the title of "The Boys Who Killed Jamie Bulger". It is so dated that it's not really worth watching, in my opinion, unless you know nothing about the case.

Mostly it covers the outrage felt by many that the boys may be released back into society one day. Plus, the anger that they weren't working on a chain gang, or whatever the equivalent is in England, but instead were going to a lockup type school with all sorts of classes, sports and fun activities.

Doing an internet search after viewing the film, reveals both boys were released, and one has stayed out of trouble. The other one, however, has been arrested for drugs, brawling and possessing horrific child pornography. That one obviously needs to be locked up for good.

A biased failure - regardless of any bias viewers have

[paintedchicken-52435 · 1/10 · 13 August 2023]

As someone else here has already stated it's on Amazon prime with the title incorrect. Part of the reason I came here was to find out when it was actually filmed because on Amazon the date of creation listed precedes the actual events. As best I can tell this documentary barely qualifies for that term as yes it does have the facts of how invents unfolded and the incarceration details of the offenders at the time, But it's a barely contained effort to gather public support for more severe punishment for the offenders. It seems that the bulk of people reviewing it are doing so as a way to express their own ideology regarding children who commit crimes. So they're not really reviewing the movie at all.

To review it as an actual film, the best I can give it is a one and I wouldn't give it that if there was any other option. As I said it's not really fulfilling any of the expected criteria of a documentary. It does lay out the bare bones of the events that happened to James Bulger and how they came about. They do give a very thin picture of the family life of the both 10-year-old boys involved... but it feels forced and the real motive of it is barely contained, as I said. It feels very much as though it was a film that was funded by the family or by extreme far right organizations that want to dismantle the support of rehabilitation.

So as a documentary it's not flushing out anything more than the bare bones of the original crime. It's not discussing in any depth what has really happened to the boys since they're incarceration. It just barely touches on the type of institution in which they've been kept and various activities. They fail again to flesh out in any real detail what life is like for those boys in that situation. Part of that is because there's a lack of information due to a legal ban regarding the boys in question. But the film leaves me with a strong feeling that they wouldn't have presented anymore even if they could because they aren't really interested in people knowing these boys as people.

I want this because I do love true crime but I remember when this happened and the amount of shock and horror around the world at this crime. Just like this boys family and the people behind us film, I felt a rage that defies words. That anyone would do something so brutal to an innocent two-year-old child just brings out this instinctual desire to punish them. But then you realize that The perpetrators are just 10 years old and do not have the intellectual capacity to truly understand what they've done. For all the people claiming they should be hung or given backbreaking manual labour for their whole lives, the interesting question of who among those people could actually in for such a punishment on a 10-year-old child, that question doesn't get asked in any way in the documentary.

The film is such an abysmal failure because it has one of the most divisive interesting and horrible suicidal questions but doesn't really bite into it. I believe that's because it was created to prevent the boys from getting released. It failed at that as well. It's such an opportunity to ask people to really look deeply into what they believe and what justice is... what is our legal system meant to do? It didn't take the bull by the horns and ask any of that. It could've created a really powerful documentary, the sort that would've been shown in philosophy and legal classes for decades. It could still have been biased if it wanted to be but it could've been a raging success if I had asked all the big questions underneath. It is such a shame. With one of the most horrific and confounding legal situation's, Unbelievably, they made some thing that's so uninteresting I found myself having to go back and rewatch sections because I had been distracted by innocuous things.

Very Biased

[kerryclark07 · 2/10 · 15 January 2023]

This documentary was extremely biased and seemed very sparse on facts and entirely led by emotion. It put far too much weight on public opinion and outrage instead of considering evidence based practices. It felt like a Nextdoor post made into a documentary, full of one-sided fear mongering and spiteful condemnation. Obviously no one can deny that the crime the boys committed was brutal and upsetting, but this documentary was disappointing and seemed intentionally ignorant. It may be a matter of when the documentary was made, but the overt bias made it difficult to watch and impossible to trust.

Very well made but difficult to watch

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 9/10 · 6 August 2011]

On the year Robert Thompson and Jon Venables completed their 18 year-old birthday, fact this would allow them to be released from the place where they were detained since 1993, after the killing of 2 year-old James Bulger, a massive campaign on the media (and this documentary as it sounds in its title, "Unforgiven") stroke England with the sad reality that two young murderers were leaving jail, to be sent to live again in society and with their new identities held secretly. The anger and the feeling of not seeing real justice done resurrected again on the same level than when the news of the crime appeared on the media. Many can't forgive what those boys did and people still think the price they have to pay for taking a child's life is their death.

Merging with these events, this documentary reveals more about who were the kids behind one of the most horrendous crimes to ever took place in England, and also reveals how their lives were before the crime and the treatment they receive while arrested. On a striking and wild irony of the destiny, we see these two boys receiving some proper treatment and education while in detention, things they didn't had while they were living with their problematic families, or the attention they needed when they were in school. But the correction wasn't all that proper. The documentary reveals that Venables and Thompson were allowed to go to other places than the house they were arrested, like shopping malls and walks on the field; the money spend by the contributors were spent in the boys care, and video games, gymnasium, things for a good education or for their rehabilitation, some might say; and one can feel really revolted by hearing those things.

Other interesting point presented here is the people's hunt for the criminals, now adults, an hunt that spread through the internet with possible photos of how they might be, based on their mugshots taken in 1993, that can be digitalized and give their new faces. The problem with this anger and this seek for revenge is that innocent people already were confused as being these two and suffered with that, and even people who were confused with their parents were assaulted. The campaign Justice for James was strong enough to make the society move and rethink about what they feel about the Briitsh laws concerning criminals youth, but on the other hand many viewed a way to make false claims, selling fake stories about new incidents the boys caused during their arrest to the tabloids, so that they couldn't been released (it didn't worked). As of now, one of them is out there living his life secretly, while the other is in jail, after returning to a life of crimes.

Objectically looking at the documentary even with it's short time it presents the facts in a very good way. But you have to research more about the murder since the movie's focus only on the murderers, the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history, and in the people who held their custody. It's extremely difficult to watch, just to think the unthinkable, the murder of a 2 year-old boy by the hands of two 10 year-old boys in the most horrific and unimaginable way is just too much for us to try to understand what cannot be understood. Available on web and YouTube. 9/10

Guilty as charged

[orbsearcher · 1/10 · 20 March 2024]

This documentary was all about making these two vile murderers out to be the victims in all this.

They took a baby & brutally murdered him then carried on as if nothing had happened, they knew exactly what they was doing & everything that was said on here was " poor John, poor Robert, they was only children" very badly Biased bit of reporting as expected from channel 4.

James Bulger was the innocent victim, these two vile human beings were murderers, they are not victims & should be made to pay for their crimes by being locked up for the rest of their natural livesand should never be released regardless of what this sick programme says.

Horrable act by children

[pwhitelaw61 · 10/10 · 5 April 2022]

I have watched a couple of documentarys about this case and it is horrendous to think that at this age you can become a killer.

I can't for 5h3 life of me understand why no one did anything, you should be ashamed of your selves I read Denise's book "I LET HIM GO" in the book she talked about how those creatures where handed expensive clothes and shoes. Taken to football games movies and one of them was sleeping with a carer.

James's parents got no help . One of the creatures has already commented a crime.