

Since those details have been so graphically portrayed in the previous and much more obviously sensational The Secret Life of Jeffrey Dahmer, Dahmer's lack of gore and historical ambiguity at times edges it toward a more low-key form of exploitation, though the solid lead of Jeremy Renner (despite bearing little to no physical resemblance to Dahmer through the majority of the film) as well as a fine supporting cast and an underlying honesty keep it barely afloat despite its shortcomings. At its worst, the film is a pointless attempt to once again capitalize on the name of a true-to-life boogeyman in the form of failed exploitation that doesn't even begin to explore the deeply revolting nature of his crimes.
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The story concentrates on Jeffrey's interactions with three fictionalized victims: Comte (Dion Basco), who escapes Jeffrey's clutches only to be reclaimed after the police believe Jeffrey's lie about a lovers' quarrel Lance (Matt Newton), a pot-smoking high-school wrestler and Rodney (Artel Kayru), a gangling African-American youth so in need of companionship that he ignores the obvious danger signs.At its best, David Jacobson's journey into the mind of one of history's most notorious serial killers is an unusually restrained and introspective view of an unhinged mind that committed unspeakable acts of atrocity that, if portrayed accurately, would detract from the subtle approach taken in Dahmer. Once his victims are unconscious, Jeffrey studies their bodies as if they were laboratory specimens. The crimes are carried out with an almost scientific precision and detachment. Renner's convincing, glassy-eyed portrayal, Dahmer is such a compartmentalized personality that his violence isn't visible until the moment it erupts. In portraying the murders, the movie deliberately blurs the time frame to suggest how in Jeffrey's mind they are really the same murder. After several such incidents, he is caught and tossed out on the street. Before the actual murders, Jeffrey goes through a warm-up phase in which he hangs out in a gay disco, slips drugs into the drinks of selected victims and lures them into a back room, where he rapes them once they're unconscious. As Lionel Dahmer, Bruce Davison, one of the most fearless of actors, gives a brutal portrayal of an emotional tyrant who disciplines Jeffrey through humiliation and allows his son little privacy.īut the heart of the movie focuses on Jeffrey's selection of his victims and the cat-and-mouse games he plays with them. What we're shown of his family life suggests he harbored an ever-mounting rage against his stern, controlling father.
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The thesis of the film, drawn largely from Court TV's coverage of Dahmer's trial and from ''A Father's Story,'' the sorrowful 1994 memoir by his father, Lionel, is that Jeffrey was a lonely, isolated young man dangerously cut off from his own bottled-up fury.
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Almost any episode of the HBO series ''Six Feet Under'' offers a more intimate view of death. But there are no actual scenes of dismemberment and cannibalism. We are shown a fake-looking severed head sealed in a plastic bag, a slightly bluish corpse lying on a bed, a blood-spattered kitchen floor (after the murder victim has been dismembered and his parts have been stuffed into a garbage bag) and a scene of Dahmer about to reach into the torso of a corpse.


Considering Dahmer's crimes, the gore is minimal. The movie, which opens today in Manhattan and Los Angeles, is very discreet - perhaps too discreet - in its handling of the actual murders. As gamely as the movie tries to make sense of its title character, there remains a huge gap between the film's creepy, clean-cut Dahmer (Jeremy Renner) and fiendish acts that no amount of earnest textbook psychologizing can bridge. Two years later he was killed by a fellow inmate. Dahmer, who pleaded insanity at his murder trial, was convicted on all counts in 1992 and sentenced to 1,070 years in prison. Is it possible to explain a phenomenon like Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who murdered 17 men and cannibalized parts of their bodies? Or are the social forces that shaped him the same pressures that thousands of other people have endured without being driven to kill?ĭavid Jacobson's serious, well-acted docudrama ''Dahmer'' falls headlong into the trap of imagining that it can somehow rationalize the monstrous.
