The Woodsman

Walter comes out of prison after 12 years. He rents a room overlooking an elementary school and is given a job at a timber yard. "Any hint of trouble and you're outta here," he is told.

He doesn't drive to work; he takes the bus. He won't share a table at the canteen. He avoids contact. Either he's cripplingly shy, or afraid to get close to another human being.

His Mexican brother-in-law (Benjamin Bratt) visits. He's friendly, identifying in some way with the feeling of rejection. He says his wife, Walter's sister, won't come. None of his family will.

What is it about this man? Once a week, he sees a shrink. You feel he doesn't want to be there, but has to because it's part of his rehabilitation.

The film broods, like depression. It hunkers down, closes off. Kevin Bacon gives a performance so intense that you dare not shift in your seat. He plays damaged like a crack in the wall. Will he bring the house down?

"When will I be normal?" Walter asks. He's not crying inside; he's in rage. And then there's his disease, in remission at the moment, but never cured. Walter looks at his face in the mirror and turns away.

Based on Steven Fechter's play, The Woodsman takes as its subject, the most heinous affliction known to modern society, even worse than racism. It doesn't excuse, only listens. Walter is portrayed as a loner, a difficult man to like, neither a monster nor a pervert. His brief affair with a feisty co-worker (Kyra Sedgwick) feels like a diversion from introspection, as if the film needs personalities - an obtrusive black cop, with a bucketful of attitude, is another - to bring a little light into this darkness.

"I don't know why they let freaks like you out in the street," the cop (Mos Def) taunts. "It just means we have to catch you all over again."

Walter's mark of Cain was inflicted by children, underage girls ("I never hurt them"). Why? What did you do? The psychiatrist lobs questions over the barricade.

"I liked smelling her hair."

He starts grooming a girl, who likes to watch birds in the park. They meet in the wood, Walter and she. As you experience his pain, you feel his desire, his isolation, his fear.

Is this what they mean by sympathy for the devil?