Review: The Violent Heart

Image courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.

"The Violent Heart" has an interesting central mystery - albeit one I figured out fairly early on in the picture - and a setup that is often intriguing, so it's a little disappointing that the film ultimately is more interested in wrapping up a plot than more closely examining its various concepts.

The film opens with a mystery - a young boy named Daniel (who is played by Jovan Adepo in the grownup version later in the movie) is playing in the woods late at night some years ago. He hears a noise and goes to investigate. He spots his teenage sister cavorting with a man whose identity is masked by the night. Daniel hears a gunshot, runs to investigate and finds his sister dying.

Years later, Daniel is a sullen man in his early 20s. He works at a mechanic's shop, but has plans to enlist in the Marines - his father is a big shot in the military - but first needs a letter of recommendation. As it turns out, some years prior when he was in high school, Daniel spent time in jail after getting into a fight and blinding another kid. His aim is to put his life back on the right track.

The film's other leading protagonist is a spunky high school senior named Cassie (Grace Van Patten). She gets good grades in school, comes off as carefree and her best friend is her father, Joseph (Lukas Haas), who also happens to be her English teacher. During class, they text each other and often eat lunch together in the cafeteria, as opposed to Cassie joining her other classmates.

Through mundane circumstances, Cassie meets Daniel and the two appear fond of each other. Soon, a relationship develops and Cassie finds herself gravitating toward the mechanic and away somewhat from her home life, although this is also exacerbated when Cassie believes she has stumbled upon Joseph having a tryst with a fellow faculty member and is, therefore, cheating on Cassie's mother. Daniel's home life includes drama involving a younger brother named Aaron (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), who believes his mother (played by Mary J. Blige) favors Daniel over him.

The various dramas and the central mystery involving the murder of Daniel's sister are fairly compelling. Less so are the plot mechanics that turn Daniel and Cassie's romance into a "Romeo and Juliet" style of tragedy or the subplot about Cassie skipping school and her parents objecting to her relationship with Daniel.

There's also a somewhat glaring plot hole in the film that I can't discuss too much in detail - it involves the identity of the murderer and how it should have been fairly easy for the police to identify the perpetrator, considering a piece of information that arrives via a big twist at the film's end. I can suspend disbelief much of the time in movies, but this one is, well, a little difficult to swallow.

Regardless, "The Violent Heart" isn't a bad movie - in fact, there's a fair amount going for it. Van Patten and Adepo make for compelling leads, it's well shot and decently paced. But the film doesn't reach its full potential, and its lesser elements occasionally detract from its more engaging ones.