@MongoLloyd said:

@aholejones said:

murders were somewhat done in a spur of the moment kind of situation under 'mitigating circumstances', but kind of fails in that as the murders do come across as rather premeditated although they are shown done rather sloppily.

The thing is, it's a HUGE leap for anyone under any circumstance to commit a triple murder like that. I don't know, I guess squares (as in the case of the author) just don't realize this. It's too easy for writers to just write "and then he murdered 3 people." Plus, we never get to see the actual threat hanging over this guys head, so I'm thinking "how bad can it be?" They never actually illustrate the threat.

I agree that the actual threat could have perhaps been more fleshed out, but at the same time I suppose they have to balance between building up the threat more and possibly giving away the ending too early, or skimping on the details like they did and ending up in this situation where people might be somewhat confounded why the killer did what he did. Personally I think it works relatively well as it is, but there are definitely some problems like the actual sum mentioned, which I believe was 70000$ australian. Had to check but it seems that the average salary in australia is between 80k-100k$ depending on where you live. I would assume a seasoned principal earns at least average or even better so the 70k$ seems awfully little to go on a murdering spree for, and probably should've been something like 200k$ to be more realistic.

Also, on a positive note, I should mention that the music they keep playing throughout the movie ('The Truth' by Peter Raeburn) fits the movie really well in my opinion.

I don't think they ever said 70K was the full amount he owed. It was just this one grant the wife wound embezzled, it doesn't mean he is not in bigger debt and this was just one of the payments.

Yeah, murdering 3 people over 70K is just weird. Why not just go rob a bank? It's certainly better than murdering 3 innocent people, including a kid. Even if he got caught, he could still potentially pay the debt and still have a life left after prison.

Posting spoilers for a movie in the title of a discussion thread is a bold move. Any chance you could edit it to avoid others suffering the same fate as me?