The War Zone [DVD] [1999]

As unflinching and bleak as it is beautiful, Tim Roth's directorial debut The War Zone is remarkably accomplished filmmaking. Adapted by Alexander Stuart from his own novel, the film centres on a family that has just moved from London to the wind-swept seaside during winter. The relative isolation soon reveals an ongoing incestuous relationship between the working-class father (Ray Winstone) and his 17-year-old-daughter, Jessie. The middle-class mother (Tilda Swinton) has just given birth to their third child and desperately avoids knowing the truth, leaving Tom, the younger brother, with the horrific responsibility of exposing the family secret. Fearless in its hard-fought depiction of incest, The War Zone pulls no punches; this vivid portrayal of abuse within a family and the scathed consciousness that results is not for the faint of heart. True to his theatre background, Roth doesn't explain how or where such brutal choices were first taken, choosing rather to let the actors bear the ambiguities and anguish of a terrible knowledge in the their body language.--Fionn Meade, Amazon.com

2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
English

For 15 year old Tom, the war zone is at the haert of his seemingly happy middle-class family. When his family move from London to Devon, Tom finds his new life lonely and boring. But nothing can prepare him for the terrible secret that binds his father and his eighteen yr old sister Jessie. Islolated, confused and consumed by adolescent anger, Tom is determined to reveal the truth.