The Woodsman

Kevin Bacon starred in "The Woodsman" on last night's Rialto TV's schedule, and what a deeply reactionary picture it was.
The (female) director skilfully manipulates us to make us feel sympathetic with the plight of our "hero", who is a paroled child sex offender after 12 years in gaol. The exact mature of his crime is never made explicit and it's gradually revealed he likes to smell girl's hair and enjoys them sitting on his lap, which sounds to me a little incongruous to me given the length of the sentence he got. When he gets to play the character of the film title - taken from the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale in which the woodsman saves a little girl from a wolf - we get the opportunity (through the figure of the policeman who stalks his every move) to forgive his past sins by beating up the real "monster" of the film: a gay paedophile character, dubbed Candy, who stereotypically hangs around children's playgrounds shaking candy bags to lure a little boy, dubbed Cherub, into his flash car. We hear it's all alright to beat him up because "he's wanted for boy rape in another state". Needless to say the Candy monster is a character without dialogue who does all his seducing in silent film manner: the perfect voiceless, anonymous, deeply seductive demon that is wanting all our boys, so much more monstrous than our hero, who at least is heterosexual and basically only did what any loving father in a family does - as was made clear in the film too. His only sin was that he was unrelated to his victim.
One must uphold family values at all times, obviously.