Truly Dreadful Film

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Father Goddard (Richard Burton) teaches Latin at St. Anthony's boys school. Benjei Stanfield (Dominic Guard) is among his favorite students. However, he has failed to connect with Arthur Dyson in a positive way. Dyson wears a leg brace. He is picked on because he is bothersome. He looks to Father Goddard and Benjei for close friendship, but gets rejected.Meanwhile Blakely, a hippie biker (Billy Connolly) camps out in the woods nearby and has befriend Benjei who sneaks out at night to see him. Blakely's basic life philosophy contradicts the church and he places the idea in Benjei's head of feeding Father Goddard a false confession of a serious nature, one that would cause him to go crazy because he has to keep the secret: "A priest may not break the seal of confession" for any reason. Oh let the head games begin.This is an older film I had not seen before. I loved the twist. Part of a 70's fifty film DVD pact.Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

After a drifter moves in the woods at an all male catholic school, things take a turn for the worse. Benjie is a teachers pet, but this drifter starts to make him realize that life has more to offer than rules and regulations. Another kid Arthur is keeping Benjies secrets about the fact hes always running away and hanging out with this drifter. After being told that in confession nothing said to the priest can be repeated Benjie starts taking advantage of that. He lies about sexual encounters with the drifter and later lies about killing the drifter playing a huge joke on the head priest. Soon the priest sees the true evil in this young man and the fact his sworn secrecy of the clothe is preventing him from acting on it is driving him insane. The more we learn, the more the twists unfold to find the sins of the father are stronger than his prayers.This was my second time watching this and I think it is truly a great movie. It was intense and shows how even the sweetest acting kiss up teachers pet can be evil and mean and it shows how an innocent nerd can sometimes be malicious as well. It has so many great characters in it and is just fun to watch.The direction was great and I love the music. This story was great and it had some great scenes some were extremely bloody and gory and worthy of any horror fan. The acting was great. Richard Burton played his part so well and the kids Dominic Guard as Benjie and Dai Bradley as Dyson were superb. I think Billy Connely and his funny Scotish charm stole the show though, this was his film debut too.great drama/ suspense with some great gore in a scene. I recommend it highly 6/10 stars

In the last decade of his life Richard Burton was doing just about anything put in front of him for money. He felt, probably rightly so, that he had nothing to prove as an actor. So why not build up a nest egg, especially with all the heavy duty alimony he was laying out. It's the only reason I could think of he did Absolution.Burton plays a priest at a British Catholic school where he's got some really sadistic kids on his hands. After a class in which he carefully explains the religious implications of the confessional and the restrictions it places upon a priest hearing confession, Father Burton hears some confessions that positively drive him to the brink and he singles out one youth as responsible for it all. Drives Father Dick quite bonkers.It's pretty bad, it's the sort of stuff that the producers of American slasher films would do with a little more gore. It didn't enhance Burton's reputation and I wouldn't waste my time.

The beginning is slightly boring but as you get into the film it twists and turns many times giving a great ending. Burton being one of the best actors of all time, gave a brilliant performance. From the tag line and the description of the film, I didn't think it was going to be a good as it was. The ending was unexpected, so i believe it to be very well written, very well cast and very well directed. This is a must for any Burton fan. I give it a rating of 3 out of 5