Manhã Sangrenta

Heart of America, released in Australia as "Home Room", is a well acted and finely crafted film. Uwe Boll tackles a most difficult subject matter with a grace and subtlety that you would not expect from the director of "Alone In The Dark" and "House Of The Dead". Somewhat predictably, Uwe's armchair critics have been sharpening their knives over this film as well. Do these people have anything better to do than rant about a relatively obscure film director's shortcomings? Don't be put off by Uwe's undeserved reputation as the king of crap; Heart of America is a great film.

Heart of America is one of several films to be inspired by recent high school shooting tragedies. This may sound like a perverse topic for Uwe Boll to examine given his subsequent devotion to making gory horror movies. However, Boll has crafted a surprisingly intelligent and thought provoking film. More impressively, Uwe succeeds where the likes of Gus Van Sant have failed - unlike "Elephant", Heart of America actually makes for interesting viewing. By treating this theme within the context of what appears to be a straight forward teen drama, Boll allows viewers to get to know the characters before plunging into tragedy. This makes the eventual outcome all the more affecting.

One of the few complaints about Uwe Boll that carries some validity is his tendency to overlook any kind of character development. This makes the in depth character study in Heart of America all the more satisfying. The lives of both the shooters and the victims are explored, which provides a balanced insight into the circumstances that can lead to such inexplicable events and puts a human face to the perpetrators of such acts. The film is interestingly constructed, revealing a group of very different but equally unhappy and disillusioned teens. One reviewer described these characters as stereotypes and I could not disagree more. The characters are almost hyper-real. The drug dealer might look like an extra from "The O.C." but the bullied teenagers, the frustrated teacher and the perplexed principal are all wonderfully realised.

The acting in the film is mostly outstanding. Once again, Boll has collected a fantastic cast - Juergen Prochnow and Michael Pare are at their very best. It's nice to see a cameo from Maria Conchita Alonso as a school counsellor and Boll regular Will Sanderson is great as the town loser. The younger actors are mostly fine, with the exception of the pregnant girl and the wooden Barbie doll playing the principal's daughter.

The film works best when exploring the lives of its teen characters. The scenes of bullying and the flashback to the rape of a disabled girl are bleak, gritty and powerful. The look on the brother's face as he hears his idolised sibling recount the rape is devastating. The film loses its way occasionally (what was with the secretary and her bizarre hand gesture to celebrate the last day of school?) but everything is held together by slick editing and a very clever script. I have always enjoyed Uwe's unique directorial skills and he outdoes himself here. I can't wait for more computer game adaptations but after seeing this I hope he squeezes another hard hitting drama into his schedule.

Heart of America is a riveting film that deserves a bigger audience. This film is eloquent and thought provoking, while still managing to be interesting and entertaining. This movie should be judged on its merits, not the subsequent films of its director.

I forgave Boll for the three abominations that were HotD, AitD, and In the Name of the King. As I finished this movie, I actually forgot this was an Uwe Boll film. This was terrific and moving, but it does have its flaws.

Heart of America tells the tale of three high school students who are beaten by the jocks of the school. It is the last day of school and the movie is filled with flashbacks that develop the characters rather nicely. You love some, hate some, feel sympathetic to some, and some make you laugh. The story is filled with all the situations that could go wrong on the last day of school, a pregnant girl and her boyfriend trying to make her happy, a cheating boy friend, meth, abusive parents, and some other stuff that I won't spoil.

The acting was sub par at parts and the script was ultimately weak at points. Though, some parts were very well done.

The ending left me in a moral bind, who should I hate? Whose actions were justified? This is Uwe Boll's best movie, and that IS saying something considering that I would recommend this to anyone who wants to see a thought provoking, moral dilemmaing film.

In Uwe Boll's commentary on the DVD of "Alone in the Dark" he brags about how Ron Howard liked "Heart of America". I really have to wonder what Ron was thinking. Some might think of this film as bold for taking on the hot topic of school shootings, but others (including me) think of it as a travesty for badly dramatizing it. It is an intriguing, important topic, but I've never seen a film successfully tackle it (No, I'm not a fan of "Elephant"). I was in high school when most of the school shootings were happening, so I feel a kind of connection to the subject.

This film follows various high school kids through their last day of school. We cut between various pre-class conversations in cars, bedrooms, offices, etc. For every character there's a clearly (and mechanically) laid out conflict. Among them are a student who deals drugs, a couple of students who's relationship is ending, a tweaker student, a group of bullies, a teacher who is overly harsh on his students, and the two misfit kids planning the shooting. There are lots and lots of flashbacks (in black and white) explaining how things got this way for the misfit kids.

Clint Howard shows up as one of the shooter kids' emotionally abusive father. Jurgen Prochnow plays the school principal. And for no reason at all, Michael Pare appears as the teacher in a performance that reminds us all why he's on the celebrity Z list. None of these characters seem all that convincing and the dialog comes straight from an after school special (plus swearing, of course). The writers don't realty seem to understand their teenage subjects, resulting in the same major problem as "Elephant": you don't really come to care about the characters. Flimsy plot combined with irritating characters does not result in a compelling film.

This subject deserved a much better treatment. However, this is probably the height of schlock director Uwe Boll's career. The characters are irritating, and some of them you wouldn't mind seeing killed, but that's more than you can say for "House of the Dead" or "Alone in the Dark". That said, it is a tedious, insultingly dumb movie which I doubt anyone could benefit from watching.

I wanted to watch this one because of Michaela Mann, and I didn't know what it was about. After seeing it was Uwe Boll directing i was a little surprised to so many reputable and excellent actors: Moss, Prochnow, Muldoon, Fletcher, Will xXxX and Paré The movie is clearly about Columbine, just like Gus van Sant's "Elephant" is. However, HoA lacks the quality and artistry of Elephant. And also, it lacks guts, given the conclusion at the end when the reporter DARES to blame computer games for school shootings rather than bullying and availability oof guns. Europe has just as many computer game players, Japan has extreme bullying, neither has a smidge of the American school shooting numbers. So, this movie breathes mediocrity: it's a dumbed down version of Elephant, a straight and very predictable flick. The actual horror is unintentional and comes at the end when several school rampages until 2002 are listed and their death count seem insignificant compared to the rampages in the 2 decades after, Florida, Virginia tech, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Breivik and Dylan Rooff

As everyone realizes by now, this is probably Boll's best work, but that's hardly a compliment considering his abhorrent filmography. This one detracts from his usual game-to-movie adaptation, and it's basically a remake of Columbine. It tries to create insight regarding the shooting, but it's mostly just banal sentimentality with copycat flair, one-dimensional, predictable characters with conventional, exaggerated teenage problems, and slow-paced, pointless black-and-white sequences to show us the 'troubled' past of these kids.

It offers nothing new to the subject. It creates a mundane, melodramatic explanation, it annoys you with slow-paced, trite, uninteresting drama, and it takes no risks. It doesn't try to offer an innovative, thought-provoking look at these kids motives, and considering that Boll wrote and directed the film, a risk would've probably been a disaster. Well, at least it wouldn't have been an already established, pointless, boring recreation.