It occurs to me that even though Kevin Bacon is well known for the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, I’ve actually watched very few films starring him. This one is that not that well known a film but I was intrigued by it being one of the very rare ones that takes a sympathetic view of pedophiles. It seems to me that it took a remarkable amount of courage from every involved to participate in this project at all.

Walter is released after twelve years in prison for a conviction for molesting children and his new life is anything but normal. He is given a job at a lumber mill and gets a basic apartment but his movements are constantly under supervision as a police officer keeps dropping by to remind him. He is shunned by his whole family with the exception of Carlos, his brother-in-law. At work, he gradually develops a relationship a tough woman named Vicki to whom he eventually reveals all of his secrets. He also sees a therapist who manages to dig into the origins of his fetish which is connected to growing up with his sister. However his new place is across the street from a school and becomes a source of temptation for him. He also notices another man who is frequently watching the children and suspects him of being a pedophile.

This is possibly the toughest subject that Hollywood could broach and the filmmakers deserve kudos for unambiguously showing that Walter is indeed a pedophile. They do keep the nature of exactly what it is that Walter did a mystery to raise tension and it’s not a huge surprise that what he actually did is the mildest possible form of molestation. Bacon pulls off an amazing performance as a someone who is vulnerable, frustrated and despite everything still tempted to indulge in a vice that he knows is wrong. His character is so put down by everyone else that one is naturally drawn to sympathize with him. Yet when he is unable to stop himself from staring at little girls and then following them around, the pain of watching him itch ever closer to doing something unforgivable is palpable and you wonder if someone like him should ever be allowed to live freely in society.

That said, this is a pretty short film and it takes shortcuts and makes simplifications. It feels too plot convenient that the apartment Walter gets overlooks a school and having other characters remark about that doesn’t make things better. He targets a young girl out alone in the park and she just happens to have abuse issues of her own that gives him pause. Even his relationship with Vicki feels like it moves too fast and is too good to be true. It all feels very inorganic and so the insights you’re supposed to learn from watching Walter’s struggles feel forced and artificial. It also tries to do too much and I’m dismayed that they tried to frame Walter as the so-called woodsman at all as if he were some kind of hero. These days, more than ever, I think that a good film really only needs to do one thing really well instead of half-heartedly covering several bases.

This means that though this film is indeed courageous and Bacon’s performance here is pretty great, overall it still leaves much to be desired. We get that convicted child molesters have a tough time integrating back into society after completing their sentences and sometimes the rules governing their lives can be impossible to live under. Yet this film itself also shows that we have good reason to be uncomfortable about having them live unsupervised in normal society. Rather than trying to address this dilemma, this film instead pivots to showing that someone like Walter can a hero too. It just doesn’t work very well. Ironically just a year before this, Bacon also appeared in another film that deals with predators targeting children and that one is just better in every way. That film is Mystic River.