Predator becomes the prey in twisted revenge drama

The powerful acting by Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page, who is actually 19, may land them on Oscar's short list this year.
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
KANSAS CITY STAR
"Hard Candy" begins with a computer screen on which sentences are being typed out. We're eavesdropping on an on-line chat between a 32-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl.
They delicately flirt. He plays it cool, presenting himself as thoughtful and mature with an interest in photography and young people. She exudes a cocky innocence, occasionally provoking him with a sexual double entendre. They agree to meet in an hour at a Los Angeles coffee shop.
It's a parent's worst nightmare.
Only in this case, the nightmare is the pedophile's. He has picked the wrong girl to mess with.
"Hard Candy," the first theatrical feature from director David Slade and writer Brian Nelson, is an incendiary pressure cooker of a movie likely to provoke the sort of heated arguments once spawned by "Fatal Attraction."
Claustrophobically staged and featuring absolutely brilliant dialogue, it's a morally ambivalent revenge drama with twists we can't anticipate and acting that darn near ignites the screen.
Plot twists
After getting to know one another at the coffee shop, handsome Jeff (Patrick Wilson) and pixie-ish Hayley (Ellen Page) return to his house, ostensibly to look at work he's done as a commercial photographer. But both know there's something else on the agenda.
Jeff never pushes, never propositions. He knows how to hold back, how to subtlely praise a young girl's intelligence and beauty. He keeps his distance, plays the nice guy. Any contact must be Hayley's idea.
So he's a bit taken aback when he blacks out and awakens to find himself tied to a chair.
Cute little Hayley is now a mocking tormentor, by turns solicitous and angry. She wants Jeff to admit he's a sicko; she also wants to pick his brain for the whereabouts of another young girl, a friend who disappeared from the same coffee shop.
And she's planning to fix Jeff but good ... as in "Honey, we've got to fix that dog."
Don't worry, this isn't a "Hostel"-style bloodbath. "Hard Candy" is much more interested in the psychological mind games these two play with each other -- and with those of us in the audience -- than in catering to gorehounds.
Tug of war
Shot mostly in looming close-ups and with no musical score to distract us, "Hard Candy" is at its heart a tug of war with the audience's sympathy being the rope. At different times we see Jeff as a victim and Hayley as mentally unbalanced. We identify with the prisoner and root for him to escape.
Then the situation shifts and we find ourselves admiring Hayley's terrific intelligence and light-on-her feet thinking. Not to mention her outrage.
At one point Jeff promises that if Hayley frees him he'll turn himself in and go to jail. She isn't buying: "Didn't Roman Polanski just win an Oscar?"
Screenwriter Nelson has a real ear for the sinister intentions lurking behind seemingly innocuous small talk and knows how to defuse an almost unbearable suspense with eruptions of black humor.
And though it has the makings of a two-character stage play, director Slade finds a visual style that guarantees the proceedings never go static. Most of all, he elicits devastating performances from his two players. Oscar has a short memory, but don't be surprised if Wilson and Page (who is actually 19) are on this year's short list.
Only complaint
My one complaint is that in its final moments "Hard Candy" veers into the improbable -- to handle all the unforeseen variables in her scheme Hayley would have had to create an elaborate game plan right up there with the D-Day invasion. Sounds like a bit much for even the most precocious 14-year-old.
But once seen, "Hard Candy" doesn't easily give up its grip. After all, the scariest monsters are those that dwell in the human heart.