Crime + Punishment

Roseanne(Monica Keena) is a popular and beautiful student that is admired by a lot of people, especially by a lonely outcast Vincent(Vincent Kartheiser) who is obsessed with her and follows her around everywhere, hoping to get noticed . But Roseanne isn't so perfect like everybody thinks, she has a horrible life with her stepfather who one night, after her mother leaves, rapes her. The next day, Roseanne is totally devastated and she decides that she wants to kill him along with her boyfriend Jimmy(James DeBello). This movie started out good, it seemed like it was going to be a dark teenage drama but near the end, it turned into this cheesy bad love story with no plot. That was the problem with this story, it didn't really fit in anywhere. The only character i really liked was Vincent, he was so interesting and he had so much soul, not to mention that he was gorgeous. Anyways, I would give Crime and Punishment in Suburbia 7/10

Crime and Punishment In Suburbia is just slightly above the normal teen character study of murder and guilt. It's bogged down by uneveness, some scenes feeling genuine and intriguing, others feeling as if they were lifted from the latest MTV video.

Crime and Punishment stars Monica Keena as a popular high school student dating jock boyfriend James Debello and yearned for by loner/outcast Vincent Kartheiser. Her parents' marriage (Ellen Barkin and Michael Ironside) is falling apart, and Keena is unwittingly caught in the middle of their violent breakup. After a altercation with her father, she decides to put him out of his misery.

The story is nothing new or groundbreaking, but the film is elevated by some genuinely disturbing scenes, as well as a few provocative performances. Ironside's pathetic father is a powerhouse of bitterness and brooding rage, and DeBello as the naive, dumb football player boyfriend eminates a tragic quality, bringing compassion to his character: this isn't the stereotypical dumb jock, it's just a young man trying to desperately grasp onto a situation he simply can't understand. These two performances bring the most strength to the film, overshadowing the sometimes cardboard performances by vengeful, doe-eyed daughter Keena and loner Kartheiser.

Crime and Punishment is no breath-taking thrill ride, nor is it a slow-paced potboiler. With an sometimes raw, indie feel to it but sometimes muddled script, it's certainly worth a look, if just for two terrific performances, one from veteran Ironside and the other from newcomer DeBello.

6 out of 10

When I first heard about this being based on Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment I was fearful that it was going to be another half-hearted teen version of a classic. I am so glad I was wrong.

While Dostoyevsky made his point with words, Rob Schmidt did the same with the films imagery which truly was both narcotic and haunting. He would make you feel as if you were in some drug induced dream/nightmare. You felt as if you were trapped between Heaven and Hell, happiness and sorrow, love and loss.

As the story progresses you watch the ghosts of Roseanne (Monica Keena) slowly absorb her. She goes from this glowing image of beauty to a shadow of a human being. It's stark and disturbing. While Vincent (Vincent Kartheiser) the seemingly gloomy one, who loves her from the beginning of the film is the sole voice of reason, hope, and beauty in her slowly cascading world of tragedies.

The film epitomizes the continuous hopelessness that many today feel but refuse to acknowledge. Although, I think what the film does best is that it shows us these sadnesses while reinforcing us with the concepts that we can make anything happen if we want to badly enough. Good or bad, we are the only ones responsible for our fates.

The 3 best aspects to this film are the acting, cinematography and soundtrack.

This film just made me a big fan of Monica Keena and Vincent Kartheiser. Both delivered dynamic and intriguing performances. Monica Keena's character is transformed throughout the film and she's able to convey that arc with great subtlety. Vincent Kartheiser's character was also conveyed very well, not overdone like so many other goth/nerd characters are portrayed.

The cinematography was great - visually compelling imagery and an unsteadiness throughout that lends to the feel of uneasiness with what is happening to the characters. It lends itself to the feelings, moods of not only the characters in the film but to the viewer as well. A great film engages the viewer and makes them feel as though they have been drawn into the world of the film.

Finally I'm a big fan of music and soundtracks that aren't cliché and don't dominate a scene. I'd love to get my hands on a list of all the songs used in the film.

The writing was decent, and many of the supporting actors played their parts very well - this easily could have devolved into overblown and overacted performances but nobody in the cast fell prey to that trap.

There's a strange morality to the story - one not easily discerned after one viewing. Of course there can be comparisons to the film "American Beauty" and while that one garnered all the praise and awards I believe this film is much more challenging yet far more fulfilling. It's more subtle and the answers aren't so easy to ascertain. I'll be watching this movie many times and I have a feeling I'll discover something new each time. Great movie!

I knew nothing about this film before I saw it, so I was hoping it would be some undiscovered classic. Quite soon, however, I realised that it was pretentious nonsense. It had the air of being made by some studio in order to appeal to teenagers who write rubbish goth poetry in their bedrooms. It makes awful, contrived attempts to be "arty", while forgetting to add any actual meaning. The characterisation is almost non-existent, people don't seem to have any justifications for their actions, and while they may occasionaly give reasons verbally the acting is so poor that the motivation just isn't there. The dialogue, especially in the voice overs, is terrible and amateurishly written. The pace is painfully slow, since I hadn't read a synopsis of the film (and I'm not familiar with the source material, and the same probably goes for the target audience, which shows how misjudged the film is) I spent a long time wondering when this film would get to its point and indeed where it was going. There is no need for it to be so slow, and there is also no point in dividing it up into sections other than to have "cool" titles like "Damaged little f***ers" flashing up on the screen. Dividing it up into sections only serves to highlight the lack of structure and the inconsistency of the plot. The film is narrated from the point of view of a character who only appears sporadically throughout the film, and the film ends by concluding a plot line that is not very prominent except at the very beggining, so is quite pointless, yet acts like it is some kind of high art.

I realise this review probably reads like a jumbled mess but then so does this film. Life is too short for garbage like this.