Sleepers

I can't believe I watched this and enjoyed it thoroughly. I was only 16 at the time when I watched it, and I don't think I fully understood it, but damn this was one of the hardest hitting movies I've ever seen in my life -- way worse than any gangster film I've seen in the past. This film was so horrific it was good. If that even makes sense.

You see, we start with four lads, choir boys nonetheless, do jobs for the local priest and get up to boys stuff. Nothing harmful, and the kids are just being kids. They have good lives, looked after well by the priest, and everything seems to be going well.

That is until one fateful summer when it's hot and they're all having fun -- they think it's a good idea to steal a hot dog vendors cart from him. Typical boyish stupidity that we all tend to get up to when we were young and stupid. But sadly an accident happens where the hot dog stand falls down a tube station stairs and almost kills a pedestrian.

The boys are taken into custody, sent to trial and put down for nearly 2 years in a children's penitentiary. Of course these are good boys who made a mistake, these boys aren't cut out for the place that they've just been sent to -- and it shows, and they are taken advantage of massively.

I'll leave this to the imagination because I'd rather not write about it but the guards were sickos and took advantage of the boys in every way possible. The enemies at that prison were not each other, but the guards. Half of the film is spent explaining the troubles these boys have to endure at the hands of the people that were supposed to take care of them.

Of course they are released eventually but not without massive scars. Humungous scars. And it leads the boys down a path they probably wouldn't have went down before if they had not been sent down to that prison.

We are re-joined with the boys several years later as they are adults, and two of them are well known criminals and killers. They are in a bar when they come across someone they knew a long time ago:

This was the best revenge scene of all time. I didn't even feel sorry for Kevin Bacon when he died. In fact my torture would have been much worse. I'd kidnap him, beat him within an inch of his life, wait til he recovers and repeat the process all over again. Daily, monthly, yearly.

Anyway, this death causes the two young men to be brought up to a judge again for the murder, as there was witnesses, however, one of the other lads is a lawyer and a sinister plot to get back at every god damn person that did harm to those boys is hatched.

Such a brilliant, yet harrowing film. A must watch!