Customer Reviews

Absolution

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Richard Burton is a priest at a catholic school for boys. One day during latin class he tells the boys about the sanctity of confession, and that the priest who hears it is bound to not reveal the confession to anyone. This is true even if the confessor has committed murder. Well, this puts ideas into the heads of some of the lads, who set out to use this information against the priest himself. False confessions are made, as well as a confession of murder! Burton's character is sent into turmoil trying to get to the bottom of things. He's made a fool of and also gets drawn into a dark plot to destroy him. ABSOLUTION has many twists and creepy moments. I was surprised at how good it turned out to be. I was expecting some dumb religious movie! Track this one down...

Burton does a great job in this movie, and the film really keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. It is very intense, and there are a lot of surprises. This is categorized as a psychological thriller--in reality it is perhaps a "psychotic" thriller!

There is a slight lack of credibility at the end, but this is definitely worth the watch!

"Absolution" surprised me. I expected a boring melodrama with Richard Burton as a priest in a Catholic boy's school, but was pleasantly surprised with genuine creepiness and interesting plot developments.

Despite numerous scenes of Latin class and related academic pursuits, the film has an interesting storyline and some surprising developments. Burton makes the error of telling his students that anything said in confession can never be revealed, even to the police. This gives the boys an idea for a great practical joke at Burton's expense, but things turn ugly fast, first for a banjo-toting hippie, and later for others. The student under suspicion is cunning, perhaps even more cunning than Burton, and things rapidly spin out of control as Burton reaps an unexpected whirlwind.

Not all is as it seems, however. Part of the final plot point requires a suspension of disbelief, but overall the film has a haunted, harrowing feel that is rarely matched in psychological thrillers. Burton does occasionally give in to the temptation to overact, and the scenery chewing is contagious in the cast, particularly in the closing moments. Despite those drawbacks (and a dreadful bit of comic opera performed by the boys), I liked the film, and found it absorbing.

It's great to find a hard to find movie on DVD, story and plot aside, the only problem with this DVD is that the video quality is quite poor. I'm not sure what master was used for the transfer, but the quality of the image is far below what we expect today from DVD releases. If you're a stickler for image quality, I would think otherwise before buying this DVD.

A really good intriguing movie with another great Burton performance. The movie takes many twists and turns making it facinating as to what is really going on. The reason for not giving this movie 5 stars is in the quality of print to DVD. A remastered print in it's originality would certainly make this movie even more enjoyable and sort after. Still a great film though.

The DVD arrived as predicted, and appeared to be as advertised. However, on trying to play it, the video portion looked good, but the sound wasvery low volume (could not amplify it enough to hear it, and what could be heard was garbled. Could not watch it and understand anything being said.

Richard Burton is my absolute favorite actor,bar none. I was pretty stoked to discover this film since I had never seen it,nor heard of it.Even if you aren`t quite the huge RB fan I am,you should still enjoy this psycho-thriller set in a British parochrial(sp?) boys` school.A bit slow starting out but does pick up and "worth the watch".Burton is at home in his role as the cantankerous,mildly-sadistic Headmaster of the school.Somewhat predictable but with a decent surprise ending--and one actually shocking scene! Recommended for all my fellow Richard Burton fans 100%!Worth buying it used for you non-believers,too! ;)
Thank You for reading!