It's hard to know whether Larry Clark wants you to pity these kids or despise them. Perhaps he's just telling as it happened, and leaving it up to us to decide. But if honesty was the intention here, `Bully' would have worked so much better as a documentary. There, the motivations and backgrounds of the protagonists could have been more thoroughly explored. As a dramatization, there are just too many characters for the really interesting thing - the psychology behind such morally vacuous teen mob behaviour - to be satisfyingly explored. The gap is filled with a few falteringly written expository scenes - Marty sobbing to Lisa on the beach; Heather giggling about her awful home life - which try to show the emotional torture and moral emptiness which might lead to such criminal lunacy, but succeed only in sounding contrived. Generally, the cast make the most of what their given: Nick Stahl is great as bully-boy Bobby (though the character is underdeveloped) and Brad Renfro as Marty is particularly convincing (as he always is). It might not be pleasant, but with its relentless cycle of nudity, profanity, drugs and sex, `Bully' is at least compelling. I'm just not sure I'm any wiser for having seen it. And if that wasn't the aim in bringing such a story to the screen, then what was?
Review of Bully
