Review of Bully (2001) by Captainhowdy — 22 Jul 2020

I was very wary when I saw Larry Clark's name on this movie. Clark has a well-earned reputation for being borderline-exploitative with young actors, and this was no exception. There's tons of drugs, nudity, and violence, all things that are relatively par for the course with Clark.

For the first half of the film, I found everything to be fairly unrealistic. The way the characters talked and the fact that they told nearly EVERYONE they knew about what they were going to do. In the second half, I found it completely believable that the characters acted and reacted the way they did to the situation. These chatty-kathys couldn't keep their secret for more than a few days, and everything fell apart exactly as you'd expect. After Bully wound to a close, I came to find out that this film is a true story. The major events played out on screen more or less as they did in real life, and the characters' names were not altered for the movie.

The movie's strengths lie in the unflinching portrayal of its central event and the sense of inevitable doom afterward. Clark really creates a sense of "Oh, **** This really can't be undone and is going to end badly." That the film stayed as close as it did to the source material is admirable when so many other films tend to mess around with the facts for Hollywood.

Bully's weaknesses manifest themselves in the dialogue. Some of the dialogue is just really unbelievable and clunky, even for late teenagers. Perhaps the characters say what they're going to do over and over because they're trying to talk themselves into it, or maybe they do it because the filmmakers wanted everyone to know that this act was premeditated. If it's the former, it's clever but not strongly executed; if it's the latter, it's just hamfisted.

Furthermore, the character of Lisa Connelly (played by Rachel Miner) makes some jarring turns. We see her go from what seems like a relatively sweet girl to a complete psychopath then back to a sweet girl without any warning at all. Maybe the girl was like this in real life, but you get no clues early on the film that she's really this disturbed. Then, all of a sudden, POW, she's completely, heartlessly crazy.

Another point of contention is the music. This event occurred in the summer of 1993, yet all of the music I recognized came out afterward, sometimes by years. The characters were watching Eminem videos that wouldn't come out for another 8 years. In a particularly bizarre turn, the characters are listening to Cypress Hill's album "Black Sunday" which came out a week AFTER the main event of the film. It's just sloppy if you're going to make a film based off of real events using real people's names but you mess up on getting the little details right.

Bully is a good film, slightly above average, but not a great film. It's worth watching once, but I feel no need to watch it again.