Polytechnique (2009)

I was put off by one of the very first things you see in this film, which is a statement in which the filmmakers hope to have their cake and eat it too. They claim it's "based on a true story" but they then disrespect the families by saying all characters have been fictionalized. It's the ultimate disrespect to profit (via cash or fame) on the misfortune of others, while not even telling their story. We all know that far fewer people would have chosen to see this movie if it was titled "Gately College" or something.

While I wasn't expecting a documentary, I was expecting something true to the facts. Now I'm left with the problem of figuring out whether anything in the film was true at all. Did we learn anything about the shooter? Did we learn anything about the victims? Did we learn anything about the responders? No.

Having said that, it did contain some of the most intense shooting scenes I've seen in a film, and for some reason I was also struck by the images of trees. But I was not impressed by the self-indulgent upside-down camera angles.

I think it probably is superior to Gus Van Sant's Elephant (Columbine) film, although it does follow in the same vein of being almost entirely devoid of content. If this is going to be the way that directors and writers depict traumatic mass murders, then they need to stop it.