BANG BANG YOU'RE DEAD

By James Poniewozik

One day Trevor Adams (Ben Foster) brings a bomb to high school. The weapon doesn't go off; it's a dummy. But when a drama teacher (Tom Cavanagh) casts Trevor in a play about a school shooting, the campus explodes into paranoia, pushing Trevor to the brink of real violence. Bang Bang is too speech-heavy, and for a movie about the danger of stereotypes, it's rife with them: meathead jocks, insensitive parents, earnest teachers. But Foster makes Trevor searingly real, a bright, eyes-averted loner who so badly wants you to think he doesn't care that you know he does. This is a flawed but unignorable trip into the terrified heart of zero-tolerance America. --By James Poniewozik