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Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Updated: Friday, February 10 2012, 02:31 PM CST
Grade: B-

What do you think goes through the mind of a young man that murders many people like the two senior students on that day at Columbine?  Directed by Lynne Ramsey, We Need To Talk About Kevin gives you a sense of what a parent of a teen murderer goes through after a day like that. Academy Award winner, Tilda Swinton, gives us the best performance in her career.

In this suspenseful film,  Eva and Franklin Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly) have 2 kids.  One is a elementary school girl who has a genuine demeanor.  The other one, however, is quite different.  Kevin is very peculiar and seems aloof to his parents.  Kevin and Eva have always had a tumultuous relationship literally since birth.  But even though Eva is the protagonist, she realizes that Kevin’s personality is similar to her own and she could have passed this on to him.  She can’t relate to people and turns away from a greeting face.  Sick and twisted in every sense of the words, Kevin needs some serious attention, but doesn’t get it in time before he does something very wrong with felonious intent.  Eva is left blaming herself for what he has done as well as the community laying fault on her.

Lynne Ramsay’s directing is wonderful and gripping in this film.  John C. Reilly is astounding as the father.  The only problem I had with this film is that there isn’t a lot of substance here.  There’s not a lot of clarification of why Kevin is disturbed, but that may just be the point.  Maybe people that are like Kevin are never really explained. If there is one thing that you should learn from this movie, if your kid seems disturbed, don’t let him take up archery.   


Ken The Critic’s Movie Review Grading Scale

A – Superb and solid; a movie that will be etched in your mind 10 years from now

B – Good movie, so good in fact that you would want to see it again before it’s out of the theaters; the story may drag in places

C – Average, entertaining at parts; you might want to wait and rent it

D – Lacks a lot from entertainment, plot, realism, development, etc.

F – Terrible and you will want to walk out of the movie; no redemptive qualities whatsoever   Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin