"Seven Days" review

Seven Days (2010)

Director: Daniel Grou
Writers: Patrick Senécal

Claude Legault ... Bruno Hamel
Rémy Girard ... Hervé Mercure
Martin Dubreuil ... Anthony Lemaire
Fanny Mallette ... Sylvie Hamel
Rose-Marie Coallier ... Jasmine Hamel
Alexandre Goyette ... Boisevert

A young girl is raped and murdered and her father wants revenge. The murderer turns out to be a simpering pedophile who delights in tormenting children. The father decides to harness his smoldering rage and use it for something productive. He stages an elaborate kidnaping plot so he can have his daughter's killer all to himself. He decides to hold the freak hostage for seven days so he can torture him and show him the error of his ways. The father is a doctor which comes in handy when you want your torture victim to survive his wounds. The cops want to find him before he kills the pedophile. They don't really want to rescue the psycho as much as they want to save the doctor before he becomes a killer too.

What do you do with a pedophile? Should you take him to a cabin in the woods for some uninterrupted vengeance? Is it wrong to bash a child killer over the head with a steel chain? Is it so terrible to take a sledgehammer to a scumbag's legs? What is real justice for these criminals? These are the questions "Seven Days" tries to answer.

"Seven Days" is a hybrid crime thriller/horror movie. The filmmakers are not shy about showing the horrific acts the doctor inflicts on the pedophile. There are severe beatings with chains, sledgehammer bashings, unnecessary surgeries, and the occasional strangulations. The doctor likes to spread out the torture over the seven days so the pedophile can stay alive until the end. He wants to kill him on his daughter's birthday. What a great present it will be for his dead baby girl.

But does vengeance help heal the psychological wounds inflicted by murder? Is there such a thing as closure? Or does it even matter? Why stop the revenge when it feels so good? The doctor gets too much of a good thing as all of the beatings and blood spilling start to take its toll on his mental health. He thought all of the extreme violence would make him feel better but it still won't bring back his baby.

Violence begets more violence which begets a pretty good movie about cold vengeance. "Seven Days" is an effective thriller about obsessive revenge. Is there any other kind of revenge? I enjoyed watching the doctor go about his business of dispensing justice to the sick freak. "Seven Days" is worth a look.

SCORE: 3 out of 4 tortured freaks