On the year Robert Thompson and Jon Venables completed their 18 year-old birthday, fact this would allow them to be released from the place where they were detained since 1993, after the killing of 2 year-old James Bulger, a massive campaign on the media (and this documentary as it sounds in its title, "Unforgiven") stroke England with the sad reality that two young murderers were leaving jail, to be sent to live again in society and with their new identities held secretly. The anger and the feeling of not seeing real justice done resurrected again on the same level than when the news of the crime appeared on the media. Many can't forgive what those boys did and people still think the price they have to pay for taking a child's life is their death.
Merging with these events, this documentary reveals more about who were the kids behind one of the most horrendous crimes to ever took place in England, and also reveals how their lives were before the crime and the treatment they receive while arrested. On a striking and wild irony of the destiny, we see these two boys receiving some proper treatment and education while in detention, things they didn't had while they were living with their problematic families, or the attention they needed when they were in school. But the correction wasn't all that proper. The documentary reveals that Venables and Thompson were allowed to go to other places than the house they were arrested, like shopping malls and walks on the field; the money spend by the contributors were spent in the boys care, and video games, gymnasium, things for a good education or for their rehabilitation, some might say; and one can feel really revolted by hearing those things.
Other interesting point presented here is the people's hunt for the criminals, now adults, an hunt that spread through the internet with possible photos of how they might be, based on their mugshots taken in 1993, that can be digitalized and give their new faces. The problem with this anger and this seek for revenge is that innocent people already were confused as being these two and suffered with that, and even people who were confused with their parents were assaulted. The campaign Justice for James was strong enough to make the society move and rethink about what they feel about the Briitsh laws concerning criminals youth, but on the other hand many viewed a way to make false claims, selling fake stories about new incidents the boys caused during their arrest to the tabloids, so that they couldn't been released (it didn't worked). As of now, one of them is out there living his life secretly, while the other is in jail, after returning to a life of crimes.
Objectically looking at the documentary even with it's short time it presents the facts in a very good way. But you have to research more about the murder since the movie's focus only on the murderers, the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history, and in the people who held their custody. It's extremely difficult to watch, just to think the unthinkable, the murder of a 2 year-old boy by the hands of two 10 year-old boys in the most horrific and unimaginable way is just too much for us to try to understand what cannot be understood. Available on web and YouTube. 9/10
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