Victim is one of those very British, well, in this case Scottish, TV series where you might get three or four episodes and that's it. No second season. No follow up movie. And, as in in a lot of those series, and this is most true of Victim, the few episodes are the exact amount of episodes it takes to craft a perfect jewel. Victim is so good, so great, that of course you want more, but the final episode, the final moments, are absolutely perfect. And to add to that would be to mar perfection. Those who have seen Victim know that I do not overstate the case. Victim starts out very good and it builds and it builds and it continues to build until that final episode until that final moment where the greatness of true and honest depth has been earned and the acting and the writing and the directing come together flawlessly to lead us to something truly astonishing. Victim is one one of the British, Scottish works that is not interested in bringing us car chases or romances or cheap thrills. Victim never stoops. Not ever a little bit. It assumes that its audience is intelligent enough and adult enough to follow along without being pandered to or prodded. Not that Victim is intellectually challenging to watch, even though it is intricate and extremely smart. And not that Victim is any where near boring or that it does not draw you in. I never binge watch shows. And I was compelled to binge watch Victim. It is an emotionally challenging show. In fact I would place the strongest Trigger Warnings for those who have lost love ones or have experienced violence or abuse. Not only does Victim deal with those subjects. It nails them. As someone who has experienced all of those things I can tell you that Victim at times is so very true and so very right that it shattered me at those moments to watch it. But it also filled me with the elation that one feels when one recognized those truths being expressed in a way that they can be felt deeply and known. And not just understood on an intellectual or rational level, but felt deeply. This is what art is supposed to do and so rarely does do. And Victim does this in such a way that makes it all beautiful without ever backing down from the tragic and horrifying truth of it all. Something only great art is able to accomplish. Rembrandt at his best, Caravaggio and of course Van Gogh. As far as Television goes I would place, and this is no small thing for me at all, Victim alongside the magnificent series Rectify, for it haunting beauty and deep soul. I have eluded to this already, but the acting is absolutely superb, led by the always flawlessly true, the unfailingly and unerringly deep Kelly Macdonald. The writing largely by creator Rob Williams is rife with dialogue that snaps your head back with its fierce truth and the beautiful rhythm of the language. And the directing is tenaciously sparse, with no wasted scenes or images to put slack in the tension. And it is the tension that will draw you in. You are pulled, you are driven from one moment to the next, from one scene the next until you arrive at the explosive conclusion. Victim is a perfect polished gem of a movie and those who experience it will know how special Victim is. Those who do not... Well. You'll survive just fine. But you' have missed out on something truly unique, some thing very special. And something truly and absolutely extraordinary. Victim, to my mind is so good, that any life will be made a little better for having watched it. And what more, what better thing could you say about a movie, about anything than that.
Review of The Victim
