Wasted on the Young (2010)

I found it tough to rate this movie. First off, the acting and cinematography are great. The plot idea is superb. There are some great political and social overtones. (Kudos to the reviewer who said this was "Lord of the Flies meets Facebook." That's a great analogy.) It's clear that this is a "Peanuts" world where adults are out there somewhere, but can't be seen or heard. However, if the writers wanted to go that direction, they can't create a world with adults that's totally without them. In Golding's vision, the adults were simply not present. In this world, the adults are there, but totally inert. This ruins the movie in a few ways. I won't give away plot elements here, but there's a fight in the film. It's preceded by a chase through library, halls, classrooms, etc. and students pour out of those rooms. The fight continues unabated until one of the protagonists is defeated and hauled off. Yet no teacher intervenes when students abandon classrooms; nobody appears to halt the fight, help the injured or otherwise restore order. This is rubbish and the plot point could have been written many other ways to accomplish the same purpose.I'm not giving a rating below 5 because it's not that bad. However, the basic plot and social situations exploited in this film had huge potential... potential I'd have given a 9-10 rating for... yet somehow flopped. Maybe in 10-20 years someone will give another go at this plot. In the meantime, only watch it if your current string of movies-to-see lacks better rated movies.

As another reviewer put it this movie is a social commentary. It is not your feel-good movie of the week. Though that does not mean, there isn't light in here too (depending on the way you look at it and what you think it might want to achieve that is). Above all though, the movie creates a mood that is difficult to describe, but easy to grab. If you want, that is of course.This is not everyones cup of tea. As mentioned, this won't give you easy answers (maybe you don't see any answers at all in it), but it might get you to think about certain things. This isn't something you can watch to relax of course, but if you want food for discussion, if you want a movie that deals with emotions and some really strange things that are going on in our day to day life, it will be a real rewarding experience watching it.

not your typical slash and burn revenge movie. although the ending leaves the viewer hanging (how dearly we want to see the villains squirm some more), it wouldn't have been as effective. prevalent in any society are bullies and the people who let them get away with it. what the movie aims to impart is that we can do something about it. I could understand why the female protagonist felt so helpless, its because of the fact that society will tend to put the blame on her for putting herself in that position in the first place. and she knew that. i've read most victims of rape will not report it to the police for fear that no one will believe them. suffice it to say that i like how it turned out in the end. even if it took me a few minutes to do so:) we see the male protagonist leaving it up to general consensus on who will be shot dead, him or hes step-brother. and i guess humanity didn't loose its innate sense of justice and choose well..

Zack (Alex Russell) and Darren (Oliver Ackland) are stepbrothers who are living under the same luxurious roof together while their parents are away. Both boys are on the high school swimming team but Zack is certified as the captain. He's involved with drugs and throwing parties though and is made untouchable by his reputation and his two friends who act like standover men. Darren is far more withdrawn. He spends most of his time studying and playing games but also manages to catch the eye of Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens). She's set to meet him at a party but he arrives late and can't find her. A jealous girl thinks that Xandrie is going to sleep with Zack so she spikes her drink and leaves her at the mercy of Zack and his goons. She is assaulted and left for dead on a beach. With the weight of guilt on his shoulders for ignoring Xandrie, Darren sets out to find out the truth, firstly consulting a security recording of the night. I admire the courage of the Australian film industry, specifically its uncompromised approach in dealing with important social issues. People who value cinema for safe, populist entertainment often sneer at these gritty and challenging films. As such, they regular fail to excite the box office and are viewed foolishly as artistically meritless. But as important as it is for a film to challenge the realities of our society, there is fine line between a well researched critique of an issue, like in Blessed and The Combination and cheap sensationalism and finger pointing. Writer and director Ben C. Lucas cannot find the balance. There's a nastiness running all throughout his film. It's deliberately claustrophobic, filmed with harsh, dark textures and cold steel. It's effective in unsettling us through its look, its heavy ambient sound effects and clever structure too. It begins in medias res, with Xandrie's body on the beach and then goes back in time to work up to the crime. Where it falters is in its lack of moderation. Lucas doesn't believe in any. His film travels from one extreme to another, solely to inflate the drama and reinforce parents' preconceived ideas about their children. Lucas likes to paint broad strokes and is for one blindly nihilistic in his outlook of multimedia. The social networking sites and the text messaging shown in the film regularly lead to miscommunication and rumour. The convenience and usefulness of the technology feels entirely overshadowed and overlooked. Even the possible video evidence of the crime takes a backseat to overly dramatic confrontations. Similarly, teenagers might not be the most pleasant people but there are very few who are completely irredeemable. Yet Lucas tries his best to make us think so about a number of his characters. There's a lot of mean- spirited behaviour, coarse dialogue and the needlessly excessive violence. At the beginning of a film a boy asks Zack about the party to which he responds in asking if he's looking for a corner to blow him. The boy is then punched in the face, without consequence. For whatever reason, a freakish red haired kid is also shown sending pictures of his penis to girls at school. There are multiple public beatings in this film too, with people punched and cracked over the head with bottles, a school shooting and even a more implied torture scene. It's gratuitous, not insightful, because these scenes exist only to be climactic, rather than having a willingness to explore deeper psychological experiences. These problems are frustrating because glimpses of more rounded and developed characters are occasionally visible. Darren is understandably driven by guilt, even if Ackland can't take us to the right emotional levels, beyond his hollow eyes. Russell also makes Zack a more interesting baddie, even if he is a little heavy handed. Zack's a sport jock, but a logical one and uses common sense to distance himself from the chaos. If only Lucas didn't undermine an interesting trait straight after Zack talks himself out of a situation with a panic attack. It weakens our belief in his confidence. Clemens impressed me the most. With limited on screen time she's appropriately more conscious about the situation than anyone else and is as such, more natural, human and touching. The lack of adult characters is still a big pitfall. It's meant to ride the metaphor that these kids have no one to answer to. But their omission is never properly explained and it allows Lucas to distance them from a lot of the blame. Like so much of the film, it just makes us wonder why he's so strictly negative about today's youth.