Care

This movie is very difficult to watch, but it ought to be seen by everyone. It's hard to believe such evil people exist, that would treat kids like this. But they do. And the rest of us, the society, we fail in helping the abused because we don't want to know what's going on. The acting is very good in general, but Macintosh is simply brilliant!

Will there be please coming an end to hyping movies that are dealing about social conflicts or other human disasters? Okay "Care" is about childabuse, "Care" is about perverts misusing boys in a school and how disgusting it might be, if it's a movie with a poor script and made with bad playing actors then it stays a bad movie. "Care" is a movie that could have been, but is it because it was a tvmovie I don't know but everything seemed so limited that it comes over as some cheap movie that will be seen by some housewifes and fathers who decide not to go to bed. There are so many unanswered things in this movie...the relation with his mother for instance or the death of some abused boy from which we know nothing more. "Care" should have been much much better.

For the past few years, stories of child-abuse within childrens homes has been in the news throughout England and Wales.

This story concerns Davey Younger, a mischevious lad who's put in care for a tad of trouble-making, and is subjected to unspeakable horrors by the people who are supposed to be looking after him. Davey finds that everyone that he turns to simply doesn't want to know or simply doesn't care. Even the suicide of his friend John isn't enough to cause an investigation.

Then, we see Davey as a grown man, trying to forge a relationship with single-mum Pauline and her three children. He seems normal to the outside world, and even to Pauline, but when the story breaks in the news, Davey begins to crack.

Steven Mackintosh deals with his role as Davey wonderfully, portraying him as the mixed up, confused person that he is. This film is excrutiating to watch and the ending is unbearable. However, director Antonia Bird deals with both the subject and the film extremely well (just as she did in Priest(1994)) and presents a wonderful film for those who can actually bear to watch it.

I am not sure what the previous reviewer meant by saying that something in this film was amusing. Amusing it is not. But it grabs you and pulls you in and you can't stop watching. Steven Mackintosh is superb and his last scene was so sad. The loyal strength of his girlfriend is also immensely touching.

Quite a number of important points are made about problems like child abuse. The most important is the way lawyers and insurance companies can push an organisation into a cover-up. Another is that, hard as this might be to accept, Davey and the others would have been better off if the case had never been investigated. It is giving evidence and not being believed which pushes him to the edge, not the original abuse. A terrible dilemma.

The director Antonia Bird has a history of dealing brilliantly with big issues, such as in the excellent Priest which looked at religion, homosexuality and child abuse, and told its story in a very accessible way. She got an amazing performance out of Linus Roache. And this project is no different. Its presentation of one man's disintegration - an equally impressive Steven Mackintosh - and inability to lead a functional adult life because of the trauma he has suffered is incredibly affecting. The drama includes both his abuse at the hands of men who were his carers and the consequences of that abuse when he's trying to sustain a relationship. The end scenes have stayed with me, even though I saw this six years ago, and their impact is increased by the very fact of their indicating just how devastating abuse is. I don't think you can ever really make too many excellent films about taboo subjects, given that this problem has never really gone away or been out of the news. In contrast to this other reviewer, I'd highly recommend watching Care. Brilliantly directed and performed. But not happy viewing.