Hard Candy, Fullscreen Edition DVD Review

Whenever I hear the words "amazing" and "great" about a movie I know that's either bogus, or highly exaggerated. "Hard Candy" fell in the middle of this. I thought it was a good movie but overrated.

The plot isn't original nor are the characters. One victim or crusader targets a sick pedophile who she suspects of abducting, sexually abusing young girls and probably killing one.

However, her crusade with the pedophile is more of an obsession, a sick obsession. How sick we find out in the movie.

Like I said revenge flicks aren't anything new and so right there my grade for this movie dropped of a bit. Also some people described this as a cat and mouse game but I disagree. While there one or two scenes where Jeff gets away, we all know he won't. The film is totally dominated by Hayley (Ellen Page) too much to the point where I wasn't surprised by anything.  It would have made for a better twist seeing the victim actually be worse than the sicko. They did do this for first thirty minutes but then forego the idea for a lot of simulated torture instead. Then again after watching this it does seem like the question is how deranged Hayley has to be to do what she did.

Now on to the performance they were great no doubt. Ellen Page dominates the screen and she really comes across as veteran here. Patrick Wilson was great as Jeff. The directing by David Slade was good.

Again this is a good movie. It's also one of those films that for me, I'll watch once but wouldn't warrant repeated viewings. I would have given it more praise had their been a different twist and more done with "the what if" question of whether he is or isn't a pedophile like in superb movie "Revenge" with Joan Collins.