Recalling both The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and American Beauty (1999), this teen drama recounts the trials and tribulations of one very dysfunctional family. Roseanne Skolnik (Monica Keena) is a popular high school student who is dating Jimmy (James DeBello), the football captain. She also lives in a family where her embittered mother Maggie (Ellen Barkin) is plotting to murder Roseanne's violent drunken stepfather Fred (Michael Ironside). After a smashed Fred rapes her, Roseanne
starts plotting her stepfather's demise too. She ropes her boyfriend into doing the deed, and soon she finds herself under arrest and on trial for the crime. With all of her friends shunning her, she confides in her creepy voyeuristic neighbor. This film was screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
What should be the heart of the movie (the interior lives of the mother and daughter at the tale's center) is instead a dud; the female characters are barely drawn at all.
The best thing that can be said about Rob Schmidt's Crime and Punishment in Suburbia -- aside from the fact that it's over in less than two hours -- is that it doesn't glorify violence committed by sexy teens.
The picture is so garish in its violence ... so laden with angsty metaphoric gloom, that its mood would feel grimly overcooked even if it were applied to one of the infamous high school rampages of recent years.
At one point Vincent muses, 'It's hard to lift somebody out of hell.' Not that hard if you're stuck watching Crime and Punishment in Suburbia. Deliverance is just below the exit sign.
Despite its pretenses, the film fails to break the mold, presenting stock characters in predictable situations without a gimmick to separate it from the pack.
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