Bully (2001)

Brief: Marty (Brad Renfro) and Bobby (Nick Stahl) are best friends. They meet Lisa (Rachel Miner) and Ali (Bijou Phillips), and Marty and Lisa end up together. After rapes, beatings, and psychological torment at Bobby's hands, Lisa becomes convinced that Bobby is the source of everyone's problems and starts a plot to murder him. Ali rounds up her new beau (Michael Pitt) and friend (Kelli Garner) and hires a hitman (Leo Fitzpatrick), while Lisa enlists Derek (Daniel Franzese) to help.

Here's the kicker: it's a true story.

Often times, I receive movies from the kind folks at Zip and wonder, "What? What is this movie and why did I put it on my ZipList?"

Despite the fact that I had never seen this movie before or have it stored in my mental file of must-sees, I quickly put together the wherefore of it landing in my mailbox: it must have been the climax of my "Nick Stahl is good looking and a good actor" and "Whatever happened to Brad Renfro?" zipping extravaganzas. No, an ordinary person wouldn't wonder what happened to Renfro. Even if someone did, that person wouldn't look up the actor and make a point of seeing all that actor's movie from the last five years. But, well, that person isn't writing this blog.

When I watched the trailer, I suddenly remembered why I had nearly removed the movie from my ziplist more than once. The answer is simple - director Larry Clark. Clark made his infamous debut writing and directing Kids, a movie so thoroughly horrifying that I have yet to make it through an entire screening. I've seen a lot of things, moviewise, that I might want to unsee (and a fair amount of them involve Stahl, now that I am thinking about it), but I can't think of a single other movie that I don't think I have the emotional or visual capacity to sustain. Maybe, maybe A Clockwork Orange, but I'd sooner do that than Kids.

Aside from any aesthetic or artistic merits that a Clark movie may or may not possess, the critical argument always circles back to this: Does Clark exploit his barely legal young stars, or is he showcasing teen reality in a way that pretty much every other director is afraid to?

While he does a commendable job drawing the line between sex and rape (both of which you see graphically), I'm coming down on the side of exploitation. I've seen plenty of graphic scenes in my days, and these were, for the most part, no worse than ones I've seen before or will likely see again. It's the excessive nudity on top of that pushed me to side with the exploitative argument. Am I really supposed to believe that a teenaged girl who dresses in only giant men's clothes that add a solid 30 pounds to her frame sleeps nude, makes all her phone calls nude, and takes pregnancy tests nude? Or that guys normally just take their shirts off while over at other people's homes, watching TV? I was about throw in another example, then I remembered that he was naked so we could have the faintest whiff of sexual abuse by the father. Thanks for that, Clark. How such intimate details could be known about the dead guy are beyond me, but thanks anyway.

I'd get into the storyline or the acting, but, well, I'm still too saddened by the sentences the seven received. Hasn't anyone in California ever heard of mitigating circumstances?

Overall, an appalling movie that neither performances nor style could rescue. D

On the positive side, a list I thoroughly support. I was surprised at how many where among my favs.