Doubt (2008)

In a Catholic school a nun suspects a priest of being a child molester.

This has a considerable degree of watchability, despite being in large part bollocks. When have you heard of a nun raising her voice against one of her fellow church members of the male sex? I sure haven't. This and several other plot points put this film comfortably in the "fantasy" category. Having established this, we can forget realism and stick to dramatics, where the film scores a little better but is still flawed thanks to a script ridden with redundancy and an uncertainty as to where its real axis lies, whether in a tedious and incompetently led investigation or in a political commentary about male dominance in the church. Also clearly detectable is the subtext about how appearances are deceitful (i.e. nun is stern and "reactionary" yet kind-hearted and responsible, while priest is friendly and "progressive" yet supportive of a backward and sexist power structure and (possibly) a sexual predator). While this is a truth so self-evident only a fool would object to it, the use of fictional characters obviously built for the purpose of demonstrating it reduces the film (or this aspect of it, anyway) to the level of those fairy tales which were once used to educate children.

Rating: 45