Little Children
June 2007 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The characters in Little Children all have needs: a man who chooses online sexual satisfaction over his flesh-and-bone wife; his wife, who eventually finds emotional satisfaction in the arms of a man who is a neighbor; that man’s own spouse, who invests all of her passion in the expression of motherly love toward her young son; and a bitter cop who targets the weak to shore up his collapsing ego.

These people are all "Little Children." And all of them exhibit damaging behavior toward the innocent. In this group, the child molester, adulterous parents, judgmental neighbors and slanderous policeman measure equal in their capacity to give lasting damage to the young. What saves them all, and us all, is the basic belief that we must, despite our frequent missteps, sacrifice our needs for the needs of our children.

The cast is first rate, particularly Kate Winslet as the wife, and Jackie Earl Haley as Ronnie J. McGorvey, the paroled child molester. Haley was given an Oscar nomination for his performance, which he surely deserved.

This is a beautifully shot film. There is a warm, comforting look to outside and inside scenes, while night sequences have a cool, detached feel. The DVD treats the images well overall, although there is a slight softening of high-contrast images. Detail is good, while skin hue and overall color saturation are excellent. A higher-bandwidth medium would most certainly fix these high-frequency shortcomings. Unfortunately, as of this review neither a Blu-ray nor HD DVD has been announced.

The audio does what it needs to do without excess. Voices and dialogue are perfectly captured, while the sound design reproduces the atmospheric surround cues that give context to goings-on in this small Minnesota town while offering aural lead-ins to some scenes.

Color bars, for calibrating display devices, are the only feature that could be loosely considered an "extra." Extras can be overrated, however, and there is already so much offered in this intriguing and painfully gripping tale of human failure and redemption.

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