Holy Cross (2003)

I saw whis movie at the Montreal World Film Festival and was really surprised at how good it was for a TV movie. The script is classic but very well constructed. What I liked the most about this movie is that it isn't over-dramatized. It shows us the story through two different families' experiences without adding too much misery or infortunes to their lives. We sense that something bad will happen to one of the characters but the movie very wisely keeps track on what really happened thus showing that the real drama isn't who got his a&?% kicked by whom but the girls' trauma after the events. The victims of what happened aren't the hard headed punks who start the trouble or the citizens who spend their time yelling and requesting their war but the kids who never asked for nothing else but go to school. One very powerful moment is when a protestant kid sees her mother yelling at the little girls all sorts of curses. You can really feel what goes on in the little girl's head when she sees her mother going mad.

The only problem is that it is almost too politically correct but you can clearly see that that was the director's intent. In my humble opinion, he tries too hard on justifying the protestants' acts when they can't really be justified. They can only be explained.