Rating of
4/4
Don't Take Hostages
Alaine - wrote on 12/16/11
It all starts mundane enough, with a teacher and students in a one-room schoolhouse in Australia. Everybody does the things teachers and students do normally until the bad guys arrive and the rug is pulled out from everyday life.
As the scenes and situations shift and change, so do the roles and hierarchy of the teacher and students. The last part of the movie, when the teacher and students are involved with police is unnerving and heartwarming and horrible and satisfying all at the same time.
This movie shows many of the primal and tribal things that are part of the human past and present and the resourcefulness and ferocity that can arise in people chosen as victims.
It's left up to us to figure out what we just viewed. We don't even know whether the children are psychologically scarred for life by what's happened to them and what they've done as a consequence.
Thought-provoking on many levels, with a feeling of reality that hits home. History and even the daily news shows us that people are capable of things that seem improbable if not impossible. It's not hard to believe the premise of this movie.
