The Violent Heart

...our emotional investment in these often thinly drawn characters has plummeted like GameStop stock.

The problem with The Violent Heart isn't that it goes too far, it's that it doesn't go far enough.

Like the two lovers at its center, his film is never given the chance to become what it's striving to be.

If this one still bites off more than it can chew, its ambition nevertheless reaffirms Sanga as a skilled and emotionally sensitive filmmaker who's attuned to the low-frequency wavelengths that tend to get flattened out by stories with this kind of sweep.

The subtlety of Sanga's filmmaking allows for big twists to come as a genuine surprise.

This is what they call "a mixed review," and yet if you think of "The Violent Heart," not as a movie, but as a calling card, it's promising.

There are some great performances here by Lukas Haas, Mary J. Blige, Jovan Adepo and Grace Van Patten, but the strength of their efforts is helpless against a script that plods towards its preposterous conclusion.

In the end The Violent Heart succumbs to melodrama, but before the climax sucks the life out of the story, it is an interesting look at legacy and how the weight of the past can slowly crush a person's spirit.

The Violent Heart comes so close to being substantial and great that it's almost worse when it makes a hard left into its revelations...

Good acting by newcomers aided by strong supporting cast of movie veterans.