Skip to footer

'The Bling Ring' needs to examine the cost of its characters' criminal exploits more deeply

( R ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'The Bling Ring' is based on a true story about a group of teenagers who robbed the homes of celebrities.

|
A24 Films/AP
Emma Watson in a scene from 'The Bling Ring.'
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” is about a real-life group of teenagers from a wealthy enclave in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley that, between 2008 and 2009, broke into the homes of such celebrities as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and pillaged the Pradas and Blahniks and Birkins. The value of the booty, some of which the teens fenced, some of which they wore and posted pictures of on Facebook, totaled more than $3 million.

The young actors, including Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, and a very un-“Harry Potter”-ish Emma Watson, are engagingly blank, and Coppola films their exploits with a smooth and slowly accumulating creepiness.

But this is a movie that cries out for more than the too-cool-for-school Coppola’s trademark hipster anomie. She may be too much a part of the celebrity-mongering world she portrays to do justice to its injustices. Grade: B- (Rated R for teen drug and alcohol use, and for language including some brief sexual references.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'The Bling Ring' needs to examine the cost of its characters' criminal exploits more deeply
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2013/0614/The-Bling-Ring-needs-to-examine-the-cost-of-its-characters-criminal-exploits-more-deeply
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe