Well, I went to see this hoping for a musical biography of quirky folk-rock-popsters Counting Crows, and thought that I’d better review it to save anyone else the same cruel disappointment…

Hard Candy

Within seconds of being introduced to the character of Jeff, we’re suspicious of him - Hard Candy opens with an extreme close up of an internet messaging board, and it becomes clear pretty quickly that there’s something wrong with the flirtation going on there. When Jeff meets Hayley for coffee, we realise what it is - Jeff is 32 and Hayley is 14.

Still, even when Hayley invites herself back to Jeff’s place we aren’t quite sure - Jeff seems like a nice guy, he seems to be behaving himself. Maybe he’s what he claims to be, a lonely guy who perhaps looks for friends in the wrong age demographic, who has to photograph teenage girls as part of his job and doesn’t find it too objectionable, but is basically harmless.

But Hayley has already made her mind up. She not only think that Jeff is a paedophile, but that he’s a killer as well, and she’s prepared to go to any lengths - up to and including torture - to make him admit it.

It’s a setup with huge potential, one the one hand for controversy and on the other for interesting debate on a subject that tends to provoke little more than hysteria. And for the first half, it looks like Hard Candy might favour the latter. The script is convincing, both in portraying a character on the cusp between child and adulthood and in keeping Jeff’s inner workings ambiguous enough that we can seriously doubt him without entirely loosing sympathy. The direction, whilst constantly betraying director David Slade’s music video roots, is successful in creating a claustrophobic stage that’s perfect for this kind of dramatic two-hander. Anyone familiar with David Mamet’s work will be at home here, (Oleanna seems an obvious point of reference), and though Slade’s film is wordier and less stylised, lacking the same subtlety perhaps, it’s smart enough to keep us guessing and our sympathies open. Is Jeff the monster that Hayley seems convinced that he is? Or is she just insane?

Then, just when Hard Candy is starting to feel like a college debate, it shifts gears - out goes intelligent deliberation in favour of genre conventions that, though they’re at least played cleverly, still disappoint after what’s come before. From this point onwards, Ellen Page’s superb performance is the only thing that keeps Hayley’s character believable, and only the quality of script and direction keep the subject matter from sliding off the rails. The more the film drifts into conventional thriller territory, the sleazier it feels, and whether Hard Candy looses you at this point really depends on how much slack you’re prepared to cut it.

It’s a shame that Slade and writer Brian Nelson couldn’t find a better way to develop their distinctive, controversy-bating premise than with cheap thrills and cliché. But cheap thrills are still thrills, and both Page and Patrick Wilson as Jeff are so good that you can forgive Hard Candy a lot of its excess. It may not offer as much food for thought as it might have, and the subject matter will leave a bad taste in the mouth for some, but taken on its own merits Hard Candy is slick, effective and darkly funny entertainment, and smarter at least than most of what it ends up imitating.