A Violent Separation

Here though, directors Kevin and Michael Goetz and screenwriter Michael Arkof have delivered something largely devoid of style or narrative tension, where everyone's fates seem drearily predetermined.

Unfortunately, the themes don't resonate in sufficiently powerful fashion to compensate for the film's sluggish pacing and strained melodramatics.

B-film thriller (more a melodrama).

While the pace slows to a crawl, we're left to sympathize with the moral dilemma facing characters unworthy of our emotional investment.

A tale of familial trouble in America's heartland that's actually quite well-made but too slow and inert to carry much emotional pull.

Goetz' latest feature may get bogged down by a flat, made-for-TV look/feel, yet it manages to hold all of its threads together until its inevitable denouement.

A Violent Separation is a painfully slow, poorly acted backwoods melodrama. The characters babble and muck about with zero sizzle to the plot.

The film comes off like a short story expanded but not properly developed to feature length.

"A Violent Separation" doesn't come together tightly, but there's cinematic clarity at times, especially during its more procedural moments.

A promising B-movie thriller the filmmakers can never quite bring themselves to edit into this slow, cluttered picture into the lean little neo-noir it wants to be.