Through their eyes

Between 1997 and 1999, eight killing sprees took place in American high schools. Child-on-child suburban violence is a spiky contemporary topic scratching at filmmakers' consciousness, but it's a hard one to tackle: how does a film about the PlayStation generation's problems avoid looking like a computer game?

Gus Van Sant has taken an oblique, rather Godardian approach to these difficulties, showing a handful of kids on an ordinary day through overlapping timeframes, switching viewpoints and (very) long shots that emphasise the insularity of this academic mini-universe. The skewed chronology could have caused confusion: instead, a clever use of soundtrack and visuals conjures up the pleasantly hectic atmosphere of a rather hippy high school, with students pursuing their interests and greeting their friends.

Using untried actors, Van Sant shows us children behaving like adults and vice versa, and this confusion of accepted roles gives a sinister logic to the shoot-out, which is a disastrous culmination of adult anxieties, teenage rage and childish irresponsibility. Once there, though, he tumbles into the trap that a thousand cinematic shoot-'em-ups have set for him: the complex, quietly devastating build-up gives way to simplistic shock tactics.