The Woodsman

Kevin Bacon plays a man who is trying to adjust to civilian life after twelve years in prison for molesting girls between 9 and 12 years old. Tough subject. Bacon gives a fine performance as a man trying to find his behavior as monstrous as society sees it. Tries, fails, tries again and perhaps succeeds when he finds a kind of co-traveller lurking around a schooyard across the street from his apartment and shows him less mercy than he did himself during recent stalking trips through a public park. His redemption comes through the kind of vengeful violence that he rightly fears (and to some extent, suffers) from others, but the darker implications of this redemption are unfortunately left unexplored. He even gets to move in with his new and very mature girlfriend, well played by Bacon's real-life wife, Kyra Sedgwick. In other words, a very Hollywood ending to a very un-Hollywood movie.