Blue Caprice

Writer/director Alexandre Moore takes on the impossible task of making a narrative that asserts to tell a rather tragic true story of some senseless needless violence without giving an emotional element to the perpetrators of the crime. The facts of the ‘Beltway Shootings’ by the ‘DC Snipers’   where John Muhammed and Lee Malvo went on a shooting rampage resulting in 10 people dead and three injured are still very much in the public’s mind even 11 years later.  What made this men do it has also been discussed at length over the years, but this dramatized recount of the story seeks to go one stage further to humanise the killers too.

The movie opens with news footage of the incidents from that time, and then moves to the island of Antigua and the idyllic scene of Muhammed peacefully playing with his three young children.  He also befriends Lee Malvo a young teenager who has been abandoned by his mother, and when the family go back to the US, they take Lee with them. It turns out that Muhammed had kidnapped the children from his ex-wife and now that she has them back and taken out a restraining Order against hm, he and Lee, now assuming the roles of father and son,  move in with his gun-toting friend Ray who lives nearby.

Despite Muhammed’s very calm manner it soon starts to become apparent that he is consumed with a sick madness especially as he begins to train young Malvo into being a mindless assassin too. When they buy an 1960’s blue caprice car that they restore, they convert the trunk so that it conceals a high powered rifle that they use to begin their random shootings of total strangers that starts in Louisiana but ends up in the Washington Metropolitan area.

Its a slow build up to the inevitable blood bath, and despite Moor’s attempts the violence still comes over as unnecessarily shocking and completely upsetting. Her decision to portray both killers in such a way that seemed to me to try to evoke some sympathy/understanding was far from a  good one, and in questionable taste.  I wasnt the only one that walked out of this Sundance audience totally stunned.

The only positive thing that could be taken from Blue Caprice, is that she has made a damn good case to help lobbyists as they push for stricter gun controls at last.