Tenderness (2008)

Polson maintains an unsettling tension throughout the narrative, building his slow-burn thriller to a climax that deliberately runs counter to the in-your-face genre principles of which he proved such a master with his first two thriller outings.

Since moving to Hollywood, Australian director John Polson has become a very competent filmmaker. I hope he finds better scripts for his future projects.

It's hard to understand what keeps these characters moving, and without true indie grit or the runaway tension that would otherwise satisfy the multiplex, Tenderness drops somewhere in-between...and that is mostly a disappointing nowhere.

Cormier himself called Tenderness a tough book written in "a minor key" and perhaps Polson was inspired by the description. But if so, he doesn't come close.