Zona de Conflito

I was warned so much in advance that I entered the cinema wearing a (virtual) bullet proof vest and was equipped with two packets of Kleenex. As the film ended, I found myself oddly desensitised. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach and I was left out of air, almost hollow.

Roth, following his mate Gary Oldman, has chosen a courageous yet uncommercially viable issue to tackle in his directorial debut. Nevertheless, aided by gifted photographer, Seamus McGarvey, and inspired casting, Roth's film is a triumph.

The stunning and clever location, the 'understatedness'/'Englishness' of the characters, the harrowing soundtrack, the unanswered plot threads, all make for a disturbing, horrifying, and unmissable film experience.

Thumbs up for Tim Roth.

Tim Roth dons the directing hat for the first time and brings to the screen a shattering tale of incest and child abuse. Alexander Stuart adapts from his own novel and it stars Ray Winstone, Lara Belmont, Freddie Cunliffe and Tilda Swinton. Story is about a family who have moved from London to the Devonshire coast. The son, Tom, is unhappy and feels alienated in the new surroundings, but when he discovers a dark family secret, things become much much worse.

It's an uncomfortable viewing experience at times, making it a film you don't readily recommend, but Roth's approach to the story gives out a powerful message without exploitation or sermonising. The script is deliberately taut and sparse, while the marrying up of the crashing waves and jagged rocks of the locale with the emotional turmoil is a deft piece of directing. The use of newcomers Belmont and Cunliffe add a potent sense of realism to the whole thing, aided no end by an intelligent screenplay that doesn't go for conventionality. Quite simply it's an unforgettable film, a claustrophobic emotional battering ram of celluloid. 9/10

A melancholic boy faces the prospects of adapting to life in a craggy, rugged English countryside separated from the London he knows. We soon discover things are going to go from bad to worse. "The War Zone" is a special film about incest taken entirely from the perspective of the teenage son, Tom, and his sister, Jessie, giving it a quality of children versus their parents. Incest has been broached before in other films like "Celebration" and "The Sweet Hereafter" but never with such all encompassing realism as "The War Zone". You feel like a voyeur prying in other people's business. Director Tim Roth presents scene after scene of stark, uninviting, seashore landscapes as well as a mesmerizing movie score that vacillates between rushed crescendos and unnerving calm to give "The War Zone" a cold, somber tenseness. The acting is outstanding but Freddie Cunliffe as Tom and Lara Belmont as Jessie carry the film with their brave, demanding portrayals. Tom must weigh the secret he knows with preserving the stability of the home. He is so perplexed about normal love and the mere act of lust that when he comes upon attractive neighbor, Lucy and the set-up vixen, Carol, he becomes stupefied rather than attracted to them. Jessie must walk a fine line between the sex act she craves and her sense of right and wrong. Indeed, at one point, we sympathize with her less because she doesn't seem to mind her predicament. "The War Zone" ends in a way some will find unsatisfying but it is very consistent with the film's theme - lost children who will never find their way back.

Whew. At a loss for words. You really feel like your gut has been ripped out after watching this truly sad story. Lara Belmont definitely deserves some kind of award for this; her role of Jessie, the sexually abused daughter is amazing. I didn't know who to feel sorry for most, Jessie, her brother, or the mother.

The love between brother and sister through this dilemma is tear jerking. Rarely has a movie caught such realism in the expression of utter despair and hopelessness. My desire to reach through the screen and strangle the father was outweighed only by my desire to hug the daughter, and root for the brother. It's hard to believe this actually happens for real, but unfortunately the reality is, it does. I think part of the "penalty" for such a horrible thing as incest and child abuse is to watch "The War Zone".

The cinematography is outstanding and serves as almost a beautiful counterbalance to the main story's theme. I guess it takes some of the best scenery in the world to help balance _that_ out.

This film easily gets a 10, and deserves every bit of it.

I went to see Tim Roth's directorial debut "War Zone" to get insight into a deeply talented actor, much as that's a reason to see Sean Penn-directed movies.

"War Zone" is a cross between "Once Were Warriors," the visceral NZ movie on domestic violence, and "Wuthering Heights."

It's visually stunning, painterly, as the dysfunctional family is set in almost Edward Hopper-still life isolation on the moors, surrounded only by the elements--lots of rain, sea and relentless wind--with the characters mostly silent you sure hear that howling wind instead of conversation-- with an occasional human being staring them down.

While the family's close-knit physical intimacy was realized in an almost 17th century way of togetherness, I'm not sure the abuse was, as I thought most incest more pedophiliac than this. So the universality of any message is lost, other than the lesson that family members are love-tropic and take it any way they can get it with some fine lines dividing functional from dysfunctional.

If Bergman did an abuse movie, it might look like this. Excellent acting all around, though as usual some working-class Brit accents can be hard to decipher by an American. (originally written 12/31/1999)