The film had a lot of controversial revues because of the name (changed in France to Petits Meutres d'Amerique). You can read a synopsis of the film here. In the beginning, I thought that the movie would be funny just because of the names of the primary cops on the scene: Garry Racine and Jacques Plante. If you know French and hockey personalities, it's funny. But it becomes serious very quickly. In the movie, one of the idiots, Ducky Plourde says, after having tied up the youth: "I've never seen a nigger so close...in Montreal they have blacks much much darker than him!" Ducky is a 35-year-old welfare bum and he has never seen a black person. It's understandable, having grown up in a pissant village in Montérégie. I grew up in Brockville, Ontario, a city of 22000 people, and there were lots of people there where I was the first black person they had ever met in their life at the age of 12, 14 or even 18 years of age. I understand the source of their ignorance, but I won't tolerate it. If you tolerate it, things like the lynching of the young black man in the movie or of Matthew Sheppard in the States are going happen eventually. I'm serious.

These welfare fucks, these fucking drunks, piss me off. Especially those who are so stupid that they'll treat a man, a MAN, like an exotic animal in a cage. It's not because they are evil exactly, it's really because they are extremely stupid. It wouldn't surprise me if they thought the earth was flat. Then, they tortured the youth to the point where was clinically brain dead, exactly the way a cruel child would torture a cat or a small woodland animal. These people exist, and that scares me. It's another reason to stay in Montreal and to not go to those little eastern towns.

However fo me, this film brings out my own fears and prejudices. After having seen a film like this, my view on poor, uneducated country folk changed from being neutral to tinged with fear and suspicion. Because it was so realistic for me. Wait a sec, the youth couldn't speak. Deaf, maybe. I imagine that if he could speak, things would have turned out differently. If I remember this, its less scary. And that's the thing. I'm scared of drunken hick farmer types from St-Buttfuque-de-Nowhere just because of this film. but if I control the fear, I can avoid thoughts and more important, inappropriate or even racist, sexist or other kind of actions.

Throughout the film, you get different perspectives of the previous night. You learn more details hearing and seeing each successive point of view, although some important details change in the telling of the story. The end of the film is a mystery. The Martial character is also a mystery, perhaps the same one. I do recommend seeing the movie. For the mystery and the realism. But certainly, the ability to perceive that reality depends on your point of view.