If you've read the book, you've probably thought the same thing: this rape scene is not necessary. There is no reason in the world that the script could not have been changed -- maybe the boys beat up the kid instead -- maiming him permanently, maybe even using the glass-covered kite string in the process -- while the "hero" cowers and watches and doesn't help. Would that hurt the big opening weekend? Maybe.

Taking a stand on Art with a capital A is one thing when it's your own life on the line. Taking that stand when the lives on the line are the lives of others in unconscionable, especially when those others want no part in it. It's made all the more pathetic by the fact that this book is such a waste of potential, a book that cashed in on raised awareness of a region and offered cliched, overwrought story lines and unreadable coincidences instead of greater depth of storytelling and any sense of subtlety.

In other words, the author took the easy way out when writing the book, and now the studio is taking the easy way out by hiding behind "Being True to the Story" in order to pique the public interest with the sensationalism surrounding this scene. What a shame.

'Shame' is not strong enough to describe this. 'Imperious, amoral, artistic, capitalist American exploitation' is more like it. If that could be boiled down to something similar to 'blaxploition', such as 'Amerimperiploitation', it would begin to describe the amoralistic capitalism at work here.

I am forced to wonder if this movie was set in a nice American town with Euro American cast and the rape victim was a white, blonde haired, American boy raped and the movie was marketted to Americans, would the production company retain its position?

What I can't believe is why the press doesn't decry the exploitation of these children. I am not going to see this movie, simply because the studio is profiting from endangering children.

Authenticity is great, but were there really no child actors in America capable of being in the movie?