Product Details

• Actors: Eddie Redmayne, Tom Sturridge, Toni Collette, Richard Roxburgh, Kate Maberly
• Directors: Gregory J. Read
• Writers: Gregory J. Read
• Producers: Carol Hughes, Cyril Megret, Damita Nikapota, Hugo Heppell, Jonathan Shteinman
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: The Weinstein Company
• DVD Release Date: August 14, 2007
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000P6R9M6
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #40,705 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Murderous Intent" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 08/14/2007

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Dark, Finely Wrought Mystery of the Highest Caliber!, August 17, 2007

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Murderous Intent (DVD)

For some strange reason the very fine Australian/British film LIKE MINDS underwent a name change and hit the US market as MURDEROUS INTENT. The original title is so much more apropos of the story: the alternate title tends to make the audience pass over 'just another death film' category that prevents this excellent little film from appealing to a wide audience. Writer/Director Gregory J. Reed and his talented cast and production staff deserve better as this is a stunning psychological drama well worth seeing.

The setting is an all boys' prep school and among the students is Alex (a very fine young Eddie Redmayne) who happens to be the son of the headmaster (Patrick Malahide) and is a brilliant scholar - if somewhat of a troublemaker at the same time. Into this setting arrives a new student Nigel (an equally fine young Tom Sturridge) who is a darkly quiet, malevolent, bright lad preoccupied with history and necrophilia. The two boys are placed together as roommates, much to Alex's objections, and gradually secrets are unraveled that show how the two boys become, via gestalt, a sum of evil greater than its parts. Alex is horrified and yet fascinated with the ritual-influenced deaths that begin to occur and when Nigel himself is murdered, Alex is the blamed.

Enter the police: McKenzie (Richard Roxburgh) arrests and charges Alex with murder, but requires substantiation from a forensic psychologist Sally (the always superb Toni Collette). Sally interviews Alex, observes his behavior and manages to get inside his mind, learn about the historical data that has directed the evil from her astute questioning sessions with Alex, and begins to follow her own intuition about the case. There are twists and turns, flashbacks to incidents, investigation details, and discoveries bordering on the occult that spin this dark yarn like a helix of fear. The ending will surprise the viewer.

The script is superb, the acting is top notch, the production design is accomplished and the musical score by Carlo Giacco is simply brilliant. This is a fine art film, graced by the quality of superior acting set by Collette, and is a tense drama that will keep an audience thinking and involved to the final credits. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, August 07

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The British And Aussies Do This So Well!, May 1, 2010

By 

Rick L. Parrish - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Murderous Intent (DVD)

Why is it that only the British and Australians can bring this kind of intense mysterious suspense film to life and breathe into it the essence that carries you along for the ride. The young cast is perfectly placed in their parts. And if Tom Sturridge doesn't ignite some teenage hearts with his looks and become a big star there is no justice...especially since he can act his way out of several paper bags at once. Toni Collete by no means lets the young men surrounding her steal anything away from her screen presence and her performance resonates with the deep abiding fear that begins to grow in the back of her mind as she investigates this murder, if indeed that's what it is. I won't dwell on the plot because it spoils the fun. Eddie Redmayne has to carry the crux of the story and this fine young actor never lets you down. Everybody is spot on including one of my favorite old pros - Patrick Malahide. For suspense that builds until you slip off the edge of your seat...see this one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not much potential, but what there is is wasted, September 20, 2010

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Murderous Intent (DVD)

Gregory J. Read's Like Minds, aka Murderous Intent, is one of those would-be ambitious low-budget psychological thrillers that makes for a better trailer than a film, with forensic psychiatrist Toni Collette trying to discover whether egotistical public schoolboy Eddie Redmayne is really responsible for the shooting of his sociopathic 'best friend' Tom Sturridge. Gestalt and the spectre of unhealthily attracted like minds like Leopold and Loeb and Hindley and Brady are evoked, but the script is really too trite and unfocused to make any dramatic capital out of them, while the references to the Masons, Thomas Becket, the Cathars and the Knights Templar are simultaneously vague and crushingly heavy-handed. Rather than showing the growing compulsion that draws the two boys together, the film oh so flatly tells us with excessive narration as if trying to paper over the cracks in post-production and hide the fact there's no on screen connection between the pair. Depending heavily on only assuming one character's point of view to build up its damp squib of a final twist, it's the kind of film where poor writing ensures that not only are the psychology and theology barely even half-baked at best but that the characters are too, and it falls into the trap of demonstrating the youths' supposed superior intellect by only putting them up against stupid people. But then this is a film where so much defies the suspension of disbelief - in one sequence, on discovering that Sturridge is filling his room with dissected dead animals, Patrick Malahide's headmaster insists his son continue to share the room with him because he's intellectually challenging company (and his parents might help him get on in his Masonic lodge).

An Anglo-Australian co-production, it's a curious hybrid: the schoolboys and teachers are played by Brits but all the cops are Australian (as, very noticeably, are the trains) and the look of the film is equally schizophrenic. The police station and interrogation scenes have an impressively controlled use of visual symmetry, but the public school sequences seem visually mundane and overfamiliar in comparison. More of a problem is Read's handling of the cast. Aside from her memorably amateurish delivery of the line "Your dirty work!", Collette is fine in her undeveloped role and Malahide almost manages to make his character convincing despite the odds, but the other players are more problematic: neither of the boys have much screen personality, let alone the kind of compelling presence the roles cry out for (Sturridge is especially ineffectual as the supposed master manipulator), while Richard Roxburgh's increasingly desperate (read clichéd) cop seems little more than a bad impersonation of Sean Pertwee. Ultimately it never adds up to anything, which wouldn't be a problem if the film could inject some drama, ambiguity or unease into proceedings, but since it never does, the film just constantly falls flat as it wastes screen time en route to its predictable final revelation.