Tenderness

Interesting Look at Compulsions
The first thing to know about Tenderness is that it's a crime drama, not an edge-of-your seat thriller. While it does offer suspense from time to time, don't expect Silence of the Lambs.

What I found most interesting about this movie were the compulsions by the major characters. A self-destructive teen obsessed with a murderer, a young man obsessed with killing girls, and a weary detective obsessed with keeping the young man behind bars.

In the film From Dusk Till Dawn, we get glimpses of compulsions by Tarantino's character. With Eric in Tenderness, those compulsions are amplified. We're able to see the wheels turn in his head whenever opportunities for him to murder present themselves. He battles his inner demons with a sense of confliction so apparent that you can see it in his face. Those feelings, as well as the disturbing vibe of his admirer, make for an interesting movie.

The movie isn't a cult classic, of course. There are a few plot...

Keeps you wondering...
Don't expect it to make any sense until the end. Even then, it feels like it has holes and filler at the same time.

I felt the plot stretched in too many directions and lacked a clear story. I found the characters interesting but ultimately difficult to "position" in the story. It felt like a mystery, to be honest, because so much of it doesn't make sense, and it was not suspenseful enough to be considered a suspense movie.

Parts of the movie are shown at the end that explain why certain things happened in the beginning. Fine, but I felt I was trying too hard to imagine what the "point" of certain scenes were until the very end. Only at the end does it seem to quickly "wrap up" and the characters' previous actions (what you remember...) make more sense.

I found it interesting to watch, but it lacks coherence.

Not Just Another Homicidal Maniac
This movie is set in motion by the release of a young serial killer from prison. His unabated blood lust, obvious to retired police detective Russell Crowe, drives the early scenes. The compulsive nature of his desire to kill makes for some suspect psychology. I'm not sure that's quite the mindset operating in teenage killers. But if you can suspend disbelief for a while, his predatory appraisal of his surroundings fills this film with the muscular tension of an animal about to spring on you.

The scene showing one of his last days in prison is especially effective. A juvenile from the girl's compound mistakenly wanders into the cafeteria where he's cleaning up, and is caught like a deer in the intense, high-beam gaze of the hungry hunter in him. This silent confrontation of predator and prey is brilliant acting.

When another young girl, a sort of convicted killer groupie, attaches herself to the newly independent boy, the film looks a little as if it's going to...

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