Crime and Punishment in Suburbia is a flawed film in which one must suffer through an excruciatingly bad beginning to get to a somewhat redeeming denouement. Crime and Punishment is an outsider's view of high school. Cheerleaders and football players are morons. Football coaches are Neanderthals and guidance counselors are clueless. A pep rally is presented like a Hitlerian fantasy. It's kind of like "Revenge of the Nerds," with a gory murder. This viewpoint is much shared with "American Beauty." The Skolnik family would have a great dinner party with Kevin Spacey's next-door neighbors, particularly since both families have stalking sons with cameras.

The film begins with the introduction of a saucy high school girl, Roseanne Skolnik, who would get tossed from 99% of high schools for the simple fact that she reveals so much cleavage. Roseanne dates a high school football goon, Jimmy, while the weird social outcast, Vince hovers around, photographing her every move.

Continuing with the outsider point of view, the sick middle class high school kids are the products of an ever-sicker suburbia. Beneath the thin veneer of the palatial suburban family home lurks unhappily married, alcoholic, dysfunctional abusers. Vince, the unpopular kid in school and therefore, our hero, is above it all. Yet he, too, drives the family Volvo, while moonlighting as an obsessed stalker and do-it-yourself tattoo artist.

Ellen Barkin and Michael Ironsides play the parents of Roseanne (Monica Keena.) Barkin turns in an effective, understated role, while Ironsides is way over the top as an alcoholic, abusive husband and stepfather. Ironsides plays the stepfather as so mean and inhuman, it comes as a complete audience relief when he is finally murdered

The movie improves once dad has gone to hell. Director Rob Schmitt is much better in dealing with Roseanne and Jimmy's guilt and the revelation that Vince knew about the murder. It may have been a better movie if the audience shared that knowledge earlier in the film. Crime and Punishment has some high points: Monica Keena and Vincent Kartheiser are outstanding as Roseanne and Vince

Schmitt receives exceptional performances from his younger actors. Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski should also be commended for the look and style of this film. The color is so rich and the pep rally sequence is remarkably beautiful. It is one of the best-photographed independent films made, but the acting comes across as very uneven, unfortunately.