Boy A

Leeper said Tori and I had better blog on this one, so here I am blogging. Let me first say my family doesn't watch British movies anymore. The reason being British movies always drop you off a cliff at the end, and my family hates that. This movie, although it was British, was not as cliff-dropping as most. It actually made sense, and didn't leave you hanging on anything, really, except for two things. First: what happenned to Philip? Yeah, he got hung by a bunch of guys, but who were they? Why did they hang him? Did I hear Jack, in one part of the movie, say that he, Jack, killed Philip? Didn't Terry say something about Philip killed himself? (The British and Scottish accents were hard to understand, at times). I, personally, would have liked to know how that all played out, but really it wasn't that important, so I'll say it was ok for the movie makers to not explain that part.
    The second thing they didn't explain was EXTREMELY important. It was the reason there was a story at all: why Jack/Eric committed the murder. If he had run away and gotten help, the rest of the story would have been so different. HOWEVER, I applaud the filmmakers for not explaining Jack's motives for murdering. I think it was a very good tactic, this unexpaination. I think American filmmakers would have tried to get into Jack's head. They would have had him monologueing about his memories of that moment; of what he could have done differently. It would have been cheesy and typical.
    You people who saw the movie might be wondering what I mean when I say Jack's motives were unexplained. The explanation was obvious: he was influenced by his bad friendship and his lack of a loving home. But American filmmakers would have, like I said, gone so much farther, and it wouldn't have been as realistic. We'll never understand what goes through most murderer's heads when they decide to kill someone; and the psychology of child murderers especially frightens people. This movie was not about sensationalism; "Ooh, look how evil and messed up this kid's head is". It was about how we treat these kids after the fact.
    And by the way, what's with the title; boy A? That's kind of abstract.