Jessica Kiang Justin Kurzel’s exceptionally disturbing, horribly plausible “Nitram” opens with an excerpt from a 1979 Australian news report on firework accidents.
A boy of about 12 is being interviewed from his Hobart hospital bed, and when the posh, compassionate voice of the presenter asks if the injuries he sustained will discourage him from playing with fireworks in future, he smiles a strange, sly smile, and says no.
Years later, he is a young man (electrically played by Caleb Landry Jones) in the backyard of his parents’ house, setting off firecrackers while neighbors howl at him from their balconies.
The intense discomfort of this nitroglycerine meditation on what makes a mass murderer is exactly that of watching a lit firework.
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