Original Title: Les 7 Jours du Talion
Year: 2010
Director: Daniel Grou (Podz)
Summary (from IMDb): A doctor seeks revenge by kidnapping, torturing and killing the man who raped and murdered his young daughter.
My Short Review: 7 Days is at time hard to watch but nonetheless a tremendous scoreless movie experience transcended by the performances of the 3 main leads.
7 Days puts the viewer in a tough spot as we follow the journey of a father whose 8-Year old daughter was just raped and murdered. When the movie begins with the father discovering the body of his daughter in a very graphic way (the camera closes down to the ravaged body of the young girl) we can’t help but feel all of the emotions of the distressed father (I have a daughter myself so I could definitively relate).
The movie does well to explore the parent’s relationship in the aftermath of the murder (they are not openly blaming each other but you can feel the resentment is in the air) and, once the police has caught the perpetrator, the father decides to take matter in his own hands (indeed 15 to 25 years of jail does not feel like a just sentence at this point). He kidnaps the molester and brings him to a cabin in the woods to torture him for 7 days.
At that point the movie could have become a simple torture porn movie ala Grotesque but director Daniel Grou prefers to focus on the psychology of his characters: a father who does not find comfort into afflicting pain to the man who raped and killed his daughter (but at the same time needs to believe he is doing the right thing), a cop whose wife was just murdered as well (and can hardly cope himself, admitting that having the murderer in jail is not good enough to make him forget and move on), the murder/victim who, in a very heartbreaking scene (“i do not need more pain, I need help”) almost makes us feel compassion for him, and the family of other victims divided into the ones looking for revenge and the ones trying to forget.
Of course there are some cringe inducing and very graphic torture scenes but again 7 Days is all about the characters and brilliantly so.
My Rating: 8/10
