‘The Violent Heart’ Review: An Old-Fashioned Melodrama with Big Twists (and an Excellent Mary J. Blige)

‘The Violent Heart’ Review: An Old-Fashioned Melodrama with Big Twists (and an Excellent Mary J. Blige)
Good movies can get away with murder, while bad movies can’t get away with anything. Classic Hollywood melodramas — often soldered together by strained coincidences and Shakespearian twists of fate — depended on that eternal truth of high-key storytelling almost as much as they did on the celluloid required to shoot them. Douglas Sirk and George Stevens linger in the collective imagination because they knew how to swing for the fences without making audiences cry foul.

Director Kerem Sanga may not be working at quite the same level, but his stirring new film pays effective tribute to the likes of “Magnificent Obsession” and “A Place in the Sun” through its vivid self-belief that audiences will buy anything so long as they get enough bang for their buck.

For the majority of its running time, “The Violent Heart” appears to have more in common with the sullen indie romances of today than
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