Release: Starkweather

 

Starkweather

Genre: Crime/Biography/Romance

Director: Sean Durkin

Writer: Lon Charles

Cast: Jacob Elordi, Sadie Sink, Paul Sparks, Martha Plimpton, Will Patton, Molly Ringwald, Chris Zylka, Stanley Simons, Hannah Kepple, Lochlyn Munro, Patrick Warburton, Henry Czerny

Budget: $28,000,000

Domestic Box Office: $49,104,884

Foreign Box Office: $21,523,045

Total Profit: $17,503,584

Reaction: Writer Lon Charles rebounds from last season's acclaimed Harvard Psychology failing to turn a profit. Prior to Harvard Psychology, the last film to lose money for Charles was To The Max in Season 15. So it would seem that Lon Charles is back on the right track box office wise.

"Sean Durkin excels at directing films of this ilk and Starkweather is no different. Lon Charles is the master of true stories here at LRF and this is no different. Sadie Sink and Jacob Elordi delivered great layered performances as the two leads, with my favourite scene of the two together coming at the end. Although some scenes made me squirm, I could never look away." - J. Darrell Ellington, Behind the Camera

"Lon Charles, LRF's master of true crime, returns to the genre with a kinetic drama that is deeply embedded in its time and place. The film runs into a peculiar problem, that being that this story has been imitated so often in popular culture over the years that the urtext feels a bit been-there-done-that as a result. I didn't mind the matter of fact nature through which Charles and Sean Durkin tell the story, although there are times I wish we could've delved deeper into the psyche of a character like Caril." - Reggie Coscarelli, San Fernando Valley Sun

"Starkweather is not an easy watch. It dives head-first into the violence of its real life characters, refusing to sugarcoat anything. The plot itself is more or less by the numbers, closely following the true story that has been aped by many other projects over the years. It's in the performances of its two leads, Jacob Elordi and Sadie Sink, that the film manages to stand out. They are both fearless in their roles, especially Elordi, who is not afraid to do anything the role of Charles Starkweather requires. A lot of actors could come across cartoonish or lean into overacting, but Elordi hits the perfect pitch. More of Sink's role as Caril Ann Fugate lies beneath the surface of the screen, but she is quite good as well." - Dave Manning, Ridgefield Press

Rated R for graphic violence, sexual content, language and thematic material