Bernie

Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine

Engaging fictionalization of a true incident that took place in a small Texas town. A genial undertaker's assistant gets ensnared in the grip of a mean-spirited widow. She torments him beyond his breaking point and he ends up shooting her to death.

Film was helped enormously by Black's performance and by numerous interviews of the town's citizens expressing their views on the entire case. The story was played as realistically as possible. By the end I felt sympathy for this guy and marveled at the film's ability to invoke large-scale moral issues from this tawdry little story.

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