Although the movie doesn't state it, the film is loosely based off of a real murder done in England, in Feb 1993. In the true event, 2 10-year- old boys (Robert Thompson and Jon Venables) lured a 2-year-old, James Bulger, from a mall and after walking 2½ miles with him, tortured, killed him and left him on the train tracks. As in this movie, the killers were released after 8 years, were given new identities and moved to separate, secret locations. That's where the similarities end. In true life, Jon Venables had been arrested and/or returned to prison a few other times since his release.
The crime in this film takes place in America and although it uses many of the main facts of the Bulger murder (the film version of the murder isn't actually as violent as the actual crime), it is truly a fictional story of what the 18-year-old men did after being released from jail. The film itself feels low budget. It is slow, aged looking and with poor acting. It is shot partially as a documentary style, going back and forth between how the young men are adjusting to their new lives, and the press re-interviewing everyone from the murder trial, as well as trying to find out the new identities/location of the released young men.
The characters have no depth and it's hard to even care about the emotional victims of this murder. Everything in the film seems detached, lacking feeling and empathy. This movie has no redeeming qualities and was basically just sad, in My Humble Opinion. 3/2015
NOTE TO PARENTS: This movie must have originally been made for theater or cable, because although they were "bleeped", there was cursing (F- words, etc) and there was a semi-nude scene, where one of the men was standing alone and naked by a pool and they blurred out his back side.
