Crime + Punishment In Suburbia

By now we’ve been sated with Pulp Fiction spin-offs. This is perhaps the first of the American Beauty spin-offs, and though I fear it won’t be the last, let’s hope it turns out to be the crudest; it’s so crude that even the sensitive teenage photographer/rebel/outcast is a lout like the others. As a believable and/or meaningful story, it gets worse by the minute, and despite the title and an opening quote, it has nothing to do with Dostoyevsky. The cast includes Vincent Kartheiser, Monica Keena, Ellen Barkin, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Ironside, and James DeBello; Rob Schmidt directed the Larry Gross screenplay. 100 min. (JR) Read more