By: Neil Smith

The book everyone was talking about becomes an unmissable film drama sure to have tongues wagging all the way to the Oscars.

What's the story?
A mother looks on in horror as the sullen child she never wanted grows up to become the perpetrator of a high school massacre for which she feels partly responsible.

What did we think?
It's hard to see how Lionel Shriver's best-selling novel could have been filmed better. Lynne Ramsey directs with dark humour and visual flair, newcomer Ezra Miller chills the blood as Kevin, while Tilda Swinton gives a titanic performance that confirms her status as the foremost British actress of her generation.

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Lionel Shriver's novel We Need to Talk About Kevin became a cause celebre in 2003 for daring to suggest that some women don't love their children. The film version that reaches cinemas this week is hard to love as well, but it still remains one of the screen highlights of the year.

Boldly dispensing with its lead character's first-person voice, presented in the book in the form of long letters written to an unresponsive husband, Ratcatcher director Lynne Ramsey opts instead to stage the story in visual rather than verbal terms. With a lesser actress than Tilda Swinton as Eva Khatchadourian, the reluctant mother who comes to realise she has given birth to a monster, this might pose a problem. Yet such is Tilda's ability to convey reservoirs of misery with only a solitary pained glance we never feel anything is missing in this lean, grim, unforgettable drama.

Elsewhere John C Reilly is tragically befuddled as the father always determined to see the best in his son Kevin, portrayed as a teenager by the demonically compelling Ezra Miller. Praise too should go to DoP Seamus McGarvey, who has easily made the best-looking movie ever made about a senseless killing spree.

Verdict: He shoots, he scores.

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