The problem with The Violent Heart isn't that it goes too far, it's that it doesn't go far enough.

If this one still bites off more than it can chew, its ambition nevertheless reaffirms Sanga as a skilled and emotionally sensitive filmmaker who's attuned to the low-frequency wavelengths that tend to get flattened out by stories with this kind of sweep.

This is what they call "a mixed review," and yet if you think of "The Violent Heart," not as a movie, but as a calling card, it's promising.