An American Crime 2007

The true story of a child's punishment that became a woman's crime.

7.334 / 10   650 vote(s)
R
Crime Drama Horror

The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.

Release Date 2007-07-27
Runtime 1h 37m
Directors Tommy O'Haver, Chad Rosen, Byron Shah
Producers Pamela Koffler, Hans Ritter, Jocelyn Hayes
Writers Irene Turner, Tommy O'Haver, Tommy O'Haver, Irene Turner

Very good performances from Ellen Page and Catherine Keener for quite an empty movie.

Could have been done much, much better with a proper direction and script.

Andres Gomez

Nice point of view of the torturers.

It'd be easy to just show them as evil demons having fun doing bad things. I liked how the script portrays what they might had thought, sometimes very subtle.

As the guy who had a crush on her and was rejected while she was still free, and later marked her. Paula who was pregnant and projected all her issues on Sylvia and wanted her to be seen as a prostitute. And Gertrudes herself who was old and ugly and probably was envy of Sylvia.

Such possible motivations were shown without stimulating us to feel anger for them.

HikariWS