Monsters Don't Get To Cry, Predator or Prey?

I remember it. The late 1980s in Baton Rouge. Two U.S. Marshals at the airport are escorting a convicted  child molester off a plane and through the terminal. The video shows the trio walking past a bank of payphones. Then, from one of the payphones a man whirls around and at point blank range, blows away the child molester with a handgun. The two marshals are shocked. The gunman? The father of a boy molested by this fiend. The dad was convicted but a Louisiana judge would not give him jail time. Hence we look at a Kurando Mitsutake film, 2007's "Monsters Don't Get To Cry."

Our story begins after a school shooting in which Russ (Kyle Ingleman) kills 10 classmates and teachers. The 18 year old is then busted out of police custody by Jim (Dean Simone). Uh oh for Russ, one of his victims was Jim's daughter. Like the bloke at the airport in Baton Rouge, Jim believes the American justice system isn't mechanized to inflict justice on the creep who killed his baby girl. Our setting is an out of the way warehouse where Jim intends to interrogate and torture Russ. Jim's ready, he has a briefcase filled with saws, knives, pliers, duct-tape, etc. First...Jim wants answers. Why? Russ is an unrepentant monster and the questioning won't go the way Jim desires.

Russ may be tied up, bloodied, and undergoing horrific torture, but who is in control? Jim, unintentionally, becomes the mouse in a cat-and-mouse game. The interrogation of the monster seems to be going nowhere, but in a sense, Jim ends up interrogating himself. After all, how do you get reason from a soulless fiend? Jim's journey will be dark and headed into an abyss of torture for himself. The torture scenes will cause you to avert your eyes, but the dynamic in the room will change into something many of us will be uncomfortable with.

Just how depraved will Jim get in his search for answers...and do we blame him? Is there anything inside Russ that can provide answers we will provide us closure or satisfaction? Is this a statement of the failed US justice system, or a warning where we might be headed if we don't cling to an imperfect system? "Monsters Don't Get To Cry" is a beautiful one-act play that completely reveals two beings who might meet in Hell...and also allows us to pose some important questions to the image looking back at us in the mirror.