Director John N. Smith’s movie, which he wrote with Des Walsh and Sam Grana, starts in 1975. Presiding over St. Vincent’s is the young, stiffly handsome Brother Lavin (Henry Czerny), who has singled out the beautiful 10-year-old Kevin Reevey (Johnny Morina) to be his special boy. After Kevin attempts to escape, we discover (in one of several scenes unfortunately truncated for American viewers) just how aberrant is the love Brother Lavin feels toward his charge, and how quickly that love can turn to rage. When Kevin refuses to call him Mama, he beats him savagely with his belt. He’s not the only molester: there’s the odious, pudgy Brother Glackin, perched like a vulture on the boys’ cots at night. Part One bears an inevitable resemblance to a Dickensian horror film, but it handles its explosive subject with tact and understatement. When a janitor discovers the battered Kevin, he alerts the police, and the ugly secrets of St. Vincent’s begin to leak out. But St. Vincent’s has powerful protectors, and a need to hush things up if they want to get a grant for a new hockey rink. Though Lavin and some other guilty brothers are removed, they are never charged with any crimes.
““The Boys of St. Vincent’’ gets the blood boiling, but it’s much more than an expose. In the more complex, even more powerful Part Two, the story is picked up 15 years later. The case is reopened and Lavin, now married and the father of two boys, is brought back to face charges. The children are now in their 20s, their psychic wounds unhealed, their lives deformed. An American TV movie would focus on the courtroom drama, the triumph of delayed justice. Smith goes after deeper, harsher truths; for one boy, reliving the experience at the trial proves fatal. And we are forced to look at the monstrous Lavin in a different light. Earlier we viewed him through the children’s eyes; now we have the shock of seeing him as he sees himself. Czerny’s portrait of this twisted, angry man is one of the most complex depictions of evil on film. We don’t forgive him, but we gain a shred of comprehension. You may find yourself holding your breath through much of ““The Boys of St. Vincent.’’ It’s a shock to see this level of emotional honesty on TV.
