Review of An American Crime (2007) by Deniz T — 26 Oct 2009

The fact that it's a true story makes it a more impactful film. however, although I admire the effort of staying away from the violence and gore cliches, I believe it had to have more on the torture. I mean it is quite hard to find instances where reality is much more horrifying than fiction and this was one of them.

That's why, I believe this film needed more about the humiliations, the torture (without going into gore) to disturb the audiences and let them empathize with the girl more. Instead this movie, prefers to give the audience some kind of support (like the characters that are willing to help the victim), to ease their pain and soften the reality whereas in reality, no one helped her, no one was good and the tortures were much more vicious than portrayed in this film.

I thought Keener's performance was stellar by the way.