Anytown (2009)

Anytown: Directed by David Rodriguez. With Matt O’Leary, Marshall Allman, Jonathan Halyalkar, Sam Murphy. A middle-American teenage boy who is affected by 9/11, terrorism, and the war in Iraq becomes involved in an isolated high school altercation that escalates into a hate crime that shocks the entire nation.

“What could have been a really good film was hampered by some heavy handed direction. American Bully tells the tale of four teens, one of them a most charismatic individual leads the other three into a crime of unspeakable horror. Matt Ou0026#39;Leary who has a brother in Iraq and is getting ready to enlist himself gets suspended from school for showing a beheading video from the wars on terror. He thinks that Jonathan Halayalkar ratted him out and Jonathan is darker complexioned. Ergo he has to be one of those Moslem terrorists. In fact heu0026#39;s a Sikh, but what does Ou0026#39;Leary know from Sikhs? Nor do his friends Marshall Allman, Sam Murphy, and Ross Britz.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn fact what do Americans for the most part know from these other cultures? We are a most ignorant people if we were not politicians would not have such an easy time talking us into wars. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn this situation Moslem terrorists donu0026#39;t do themselves any good either. Since the Seventies theyu0026#39;ve done all kinds of unspeakable acts starting with the massacre of those Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Not hard to hate these people as young Ou0026#39;Leary and his friends do.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut in point of fact theyu0026#39;re punks and nothing justifies what they did. And that they chose a Sikh because they donu0026#39;t know the difference, chalk one up for ignorance.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAmerican Bully covers a wide range of troubling issues, hate crimes, bullying, and ignorance and maybe another viewer can add a few more. These issues deserve a better film.”