Bully

Controversial director Larry Clark's based on real-life events "Bully" is sometimes quite hard to watch, but you can't quite stop yourself from watching the misadventures of these messed up children either. This film feels so real, so nitty-gritty, that at times, you may feel like an intruder, watching someone else's life. These children are so far removed from being children, it is hard to think that they actually are just children. After all, the concept of a group of kids killing their so-called friend, well, its hardly child's play now is it? The cast are great. Brad Renfro is top-notch in all his performances, here is no exception. Bijou Phillips is great, Rachel Miner is cunning, Kelli Garner is a lot of fun, Michael Pitt is slightly annoying, but entertaining nonetheless. Nick Stahl is intense, to say the least.

Of course it would be hard to say you condone the actions of these "kids", after all, they murdered. But it makes for gripping drama. The film also reveals the sentencing which the kids received for their parts in the murder, some of which was very surprising. A great film, but you need to be in the mood for a hard-watch.

I just watched this movie, and I found it interesting and compelling enough to check the IMDb site. I have always found Larry Clarks movies captivating, and this one was no exception. However when i was reading through the reviews I saw people constantly referring to the teens lives as "empty and meaningless", using their pot smoking and sex as examples.

This completely defeats the purpose of Larry Clarks films as I (as a teen) interpret them. These movies don't show "those" rotten kids hanging out on the street corners. They depict YOUR kids in a way you never want to see them. Thats why his movies are so powerful, because they show a reality few people want to admit exists. This movie, and Kids should be standard viewing for parents and teens alike. So parents realize what their kids are getting up to and so teens realize what can come of their actions.

Marty and Bobby are friends who work together, drink together, pick up girls together and hustle together. The dynamics of their friendship is not that straightforward though as Bobby is by far the dominant one and thinks nothing of demeaning and bullying Marty and having fun exploiting anyone he sees as below him. While highschool drop out Marty gets Lisa pregnant, Bobby's future looks good with college and his father's support ahead of him – all this despite raping Lisa's friend Ali. When enough is enough Bobby's friends decide to kill him.

I'm not sure what it is about Larry Clark and teenage sex and nudity but he does seem to have made it a career motif – sometimes to good effect (Kids) and sometimes in a way that is exploitative and nasty (the horrid Teenage Caveman springs to mind). However with good reviews I figured that perhaps Bully would be able to have the sexual material within a context. The result here is a rather mixed approach where the true story does necessitate the depiction of teen sex and drug use however Clark does push this more than he really needs to with shots of nude girls on the toilet, graphic drug use and one or two "upskirt" shots of girls' underwear that a gonzo pornographer would have been proud of. Fortunately his subject is good enough to prevent it become shocking for shocking's sake. The narrative is interesting because of it being true but it didn't develop the characters well enough to make this as fascinating as it should have been. Instead of doing this for the first half, we instead just see lots of actions (nudity, fighting, drugs) which fills the time but is not the same as writing good characters. The overuse of nudity in this part is excessive and rather tiring and I did start to feel that Clark maybe doesn't understand his characters but he does know from the reports what they did, so this is what show.

The part of the film that occurs after the murder is much more interesting and convincing and this helps cover the weaknesses of the first part. For all Clark's excesses in his films he does know how to draw good performances from his young casts. Stahl is impressive in the lead and does the best he can with his character producing some nice contradictions within this boy – shame that Clark isn't that interested in this. Renfro is not quite as convincing a person although he does work well as the slightly weak-willed loser. Phillips is better while Miner is a straightforward character – with both of them I felt a bit uncomfortable watching them be naked so often as they were. The rest of the cast are all as realistic and natural and, although they come over as stoned out losers and the dregs of youth culture but then that was the point I suppose.

Overall then an impacting film but nowhere near as insightful or as important as it should have been. Instead of delving into the subject, Clark is happy to just show us how they lived – with lots of sex and drug use, which was necessary to a point but shouldn't have been allowed to be as much of the show as it was. Worth a look for those used to Clark's approach but not as good as it should have been.

It seems that the reviews of this movie are rather bleak because people say that the director focused too much on sex and that this was not a realistic picture for teens. I watched the movie, and read the book, and I have another reference source- my mother was a juror for the court case State of Florida Vs. Ali Willis and Donny Semenec. She was sequestered for over a month and was told every piece of information about these two teenagers and their friends.

This sex/drug filled movie is a spot-on represenation of these kid's sad life. They had no future, no regrets, didn't go to school and yes, they had sex with each other a lot. From what my mother says, if you were to make a movie about them accurately, it would have to be close to 75% sex. The bully was bi-sexual and would force his best friend to have sex with him after he had raped his girlfriend. These kids were also not poor white trash, as their parents were very wealthy, and they drove nice cars.

I think the fact is some people cannot stomach the idea of these kids being real, so they blame the director for not interpreting the story correctly. This is a story of middle- upper class kids, kids like your sons and daughters.

I thought this movie was very good. 7.5/10

There's something about the kids in Larry Clark's films, such as this, Bully, and his 1995 classic Kids (which took place in New York and had the feel of an un-interviewed documentary), where the characters are brought so vividly to life, and their contemplations and actions in their dead-end lives, that I get reminded of the people I was around back in my grade school days (I've been out of the public school system for six months now). I remember the lay-abouts, the complainers, the overly medicated, and of course I remember the bullies, laying on abuse that sometimes they weren't even aware they were inflicting.

Nick Stahl plays Billy, bully among a circle of teenage friends in Hollywood, Florida, and his best friend from childhood is Marty, played with striking intensity by Brad Renfro, has been daily receiving torment, if not with punches and slaps, then more on the mental side. Soon, his girlfriend makes a suggestion "he should be killed", and very soon after that the circle of friends agree, and then it continues, along with a so-called hit man, a good small part for Fitzpatrick who was noteworthy in Kids.

There will be some out there who may not be able to stomach the elements - it's unrated, not a bad move, and there are as many moments of sex as in a Cinemax soft porn and as many moments of smoking dope as in a Method Man/Redman production - but that's all part of Clark's overall effect, and he pulls it off like a true craftsman and not as a overly exploitation film-maker. This circle of friends are a sad, hollow representation of the kinds of societies the youth of the nation inhabit, and the key is that it's correct, at least in such a banal suburbia. Grade: A