Puzzling revisionist return to 1920s Chicago, wherein a couple of vicarious thrill-seekers and gay lovers graduate from breaking storefront windows to masterminding the murder of a young boy (within the pretense of a kidnapping-for-ransom job). True story of convicted murderers Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. is given a stark, visually arresting and stylish look, but the men themselves are annoyingly enigmatic. The pair are seen as lustful and reckless, yet they're also in denial over their actions, their religion (both were Jewish) and their homosexuality. The film doesn't equate their self-denial with anything substantial (not their upbringings, their behavior in public or private, nor their state of wealth), and the intrinsic aloofness keeps the picture from being a gripping document. Some of the details of the case are confusing as presented, either brushed passed without great thought or left deliberately ambiguous (as with the prosecutor's claim the young victim was sexually abused, something we don't see). There are mordantly amusing asides (such as Leopold allegedly suing the movie producer behind 1959's "Compulsion" because it portrayed him in a negative fashion!), yet the pair's prison years are hardly delved into, leaving us with less at the finish than we initially had. ** from ****
Review of Swoon
