TOR takes on the movies

Today we review an old classic, Sleepers a Hollywood blockbuster which many people loved but TOR just did not.

The movie is set around four guys who as juveniles spend time at the Wilkinson Home for Boys a juvenile penitentiary where they were beaten, abused and sexually abused by the prison guards including the character played by Kevin Bacon. The drama is set when years later two of the boys, John and Tommy run into the Bacon character and seek vengeance by murdering him .. how is that for SIX degrees!!!!

The movie basically takes place in the courtroom as Mike one of the other kids who has grown up to become a responsible member of society and works for the DA gets himself onto the case to intentionally throw the case which would in turn set free the two of the guys who murdered the Bacon character. Their defense is handled by Dustin Hoffman, who seems to be stuck in the perpetual Rain-Man character who along with the DA guy and the fourth kid come up with a defense which depends on the testimony of the Father Bobby a local priest played by Robert DeNiro to lie under oath saying they were with him at a Knick game at the time of the murder as their alibi.
 In addition to this they bring to the witness stand a bunch of the other guards and grill them about their time as guards at the Wilkinson School for Boys and basically have them admit that they were a bunch of perverts

It’s a good movie with a ton of stars (Brad Pitt, Jason Patrick, DeNiro, Hoffman, Mini Driver and the guy from Men Behaving Badly) but it had one major flaw.

See their entire defense is based on Father Bobby saying he was with the boys the night of the murder but the entire court case revolves around the abuses that happened at the Wilkinson School for Boys. What has always bothered me is that if your claim is that you weren’t anywhere near the murders why is it important to point out to the court the fact that guy who got murdered was a pedophile? If the case had been about guys who flipped and there was a moment of ‘temporary insanity’ then all the abuses that were brought out at the trial would be evidence but when your entire alibi was that you weren’t there, bringing up the fact that the dude and his buddies were kiddy-touchers is really not relevant.  At some point the judge should have asked

Now I have no idea why this bothers me as much as it does but it’s always killed me