I'll cut to the chase... CRIME AND PUNISHMENT is a famous novel and has been remade a lot of times in movies and TV, and AMERICAN BEAUTY is considered a cult movie and deservingly so. So it's no surprise that some director who probably hadn't better things to do wanted to mix up the two stories. It could have been great right? Well, you are wrong. We'll see about this shall we?
Roseanne Skolnick is a high school student on her last year that has a loving boyfriend named Jimmy and another guy named Vincent (Vincent Kartheiser) has the hots for her but she has a dysfunctional life at her home. Her mother Maggie (Ellen Barkin) is unsastified of her marriage with abusive and alcoholic Fred Skolnick (Michael Ironside) who became Roseanne's stepfather since she was 4. After a while Maggie starts a relationship with bartender Chris (Jeffrey Wright) leaving Roseanne alone with Fred, and here trouble begins. One night during a drunken rage Fred r***s Roseanne leaving her emotionally scarred, and in fact Roseanne will suffer a nervous breakdown at school. Maggie will visits Roseanne and plot with her to kill Fred with the help of Jimmy.
During a party Roseanne and Jimmy briefly go in the house and after a brief struggle Roseanne manages to kill Fred stabbing him multiple times with an electric knife. Maggie, unknown of the fact that Roseanne did the murder, is charged of the murder since she was found at home with the dead body tho she declares herself innocent. In the meanwhile Roseanne and Jimmy's relationship becomes strained because of their shared guilt on Fred's murder and Vincent will become smitten with Roseanne, much for the anger of Jimmy that one night goes berserk in a bar until Chris accepts to drive him home, and during a scuffle between Jimmy, Roseanne, Vincent and Chris the latter's gun shoots Jimmy without killing him. In the end Roseanne will finally confess to have killed Fred Skolnick; after the manslaughter sentence she is picked up by her boyfriend and they drive away... something the viewer will never feel after watching this pile of manure.
I appreciated that the director wanted to tell the CRIME AND PUNISHMENT story in a modern setting but the main problem is that none of the characters were likeable in the least. Roseanne wasn't exactly a saint since she bounces back and forth between her boyfriend and the guy smitten with her. Her mom Maggie looked like she hadn't much of a choice for ending with such a raging alcoholic like Fred, and Chris looked like a blend between a comic relief or a helpful character for the plot. I am not blaming the cast members: they simply had a bad script, accepted blindly and then they did what the director told them. It also came off like copied from AMERICAN BEAUTY with the main difference that in THAT there are at least great performances and likeable characters but here none of that magic required for a great movie is present here.
In substance, if you want to see an adaptation of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT watch all the other versions (including the one from 1998 with Ben Kingsley and Patrick Dempsey) but please avoid this one, it's not that loyal and will leave you frustrated.
