You won't be disappointed!

Powerful

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The annual fund raiser at a parochial boy's school becomes a battleground between integrity and peer pressure when a lone freshman defies authority by refusing to join the mandatory chocolate sale, calling down the wrath of both his megalomaniac headmaster and an omnipotent secret society of upperclassmen. Disregarding the techno-pop sound track the best that can be said about this murky allegorical drama is that it makes a sincere attempt to avoid standard teen movie clichés. But whatever message it might have had is camouflaged by the trendy, self-conscious photography (fancy POV camera moves, slow motion flashbacks) and a lack of definition to the campus background. The characters, as a result, all seem to be moving in a vacuum, which makes for a curiously uninvolving film.

Considering the powerful and harshly real novel by Robert Cormier, this Keith Gordon film falls short of the mark. It lacks the absolute power and tragic pointlessness of the book. There are some good performances, but I felt Glover was miscast as Brother Leon.The film does a good job siding us against Archie and for Jerome, but I did not feel this was necessary. Archie is not the only, and hardly the worst, villain.The ending, which does not comply with that of Cormier's novel, defeats the whole purpose of the story. Evil can, and will in many circumstances, win over good. This movie lacked that harsh finish it needed.Friday, February 8, 1991 - Television

This is a textbook example of how NOT to adapt a book to the screen.Teenager Jerry Renault in high school is having a terrible life. His mother just died, he has no connection with his father and has next to no friends. Then he has a run in with a secret group in the school called the Vigils. They tell him to do something and he refuses. Then his life becomes a nightmare...At least that's how the book went. The book is harrowing. Strong, powerful and very bleak and desolate and Jerry is put through utter hell and is almost killed in the end in a truly horrifying sequence. A faithful adaptation of the novel was not going to happen--it was considered too extreme and doubtless it would get an X rating (for the violence). So...why bother with a movie version? Well...they did. The story was toned down and changed a LOT and VERY badly cast (especially the part of Janza). It was also shot with a wobbly camera which made me sea sick and (for some reason) Jerry has acne and nobody else does (?????) And, worst of all, they totally changed the ending which completely destroyed the point of the book! The ending is just hopeless--I'd love to know what they thought of when they dreamed it up.The book is powerful, grim stuff and NOT for kids. It's not easy to read--it's very disturbing--but it has a point. This movie just tones down everything, casts it badly and destroys the book. This seems to have disappeared completely--that's a good thing. Don't bother. I give it a 1.

An extremely low budget adaptation of Robert Cormier's coming-of-age novel hits most of the marks with accuracy. For the uninitiated, the plot concerns Jerry Renault, a freshman at a religious private school. He is drifting in an emotional vacuum since the death of his mother particularly due to the resulting emotional gulf between he and his father.At Jerry's school a secret society known as The Vigils plan various pranks and psychological games, known as assignments and given to various nervous freshmen such as Jerry. When a school chocolate sale becomes the focus of the Vigils and the staff, Jerry takes a seemingly futile stand against conformity that sets off many ramifications...The main things to praise about the adaptation are the acting by the various (mostly quite young) participants, and the tight script, which maintains a remarkable fidelity to the structure of Cormier's novel.MAJOR SPOILER!!!There has been much controversy concerning the ending to the movie, which is of the surface quite different from the novel. It is true that in the novel the villians go 'unpunished', while that is not the case in the movie. However, I would argue that the fate of Jerry, the protagonist is roughly the same. The point being that even if Jerry 'wins' the climactic fight, he has still really lost, because he has doomed himself by being a participant in a contest not of his making.Worth a look, but if you're studying the book at school, you'll need to read it as well.