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The Family | 2013 | R | - 6.7.8

A Mafia boss (Robert De Niro) and his family (Michelle Pfeiffer, Dianna Agron and John D'Leo) are placed in the witness protection program and relocated to a small town in France. But their assigned special agent (Tommy Lee Jones) has his hands full as he follows up on the family that keeps reverting to old habits. Real trouble ensues as the family attracts the attention of the Mafia. Also with Domenick Lombardozzi. Directed by Luc Besson. [1:51]

SEX/NUDITY 6 - A teen girl enters a college-aged math tutor's office and locks the door behind her; he approaches her and she grabs him into a mutually passionate kiss; they fumble with his belt, the camera pans back and we see her leg bent at the knee with her skirt falling back to reveal most of her bare leg while he thrusts with her back against the door, as they kiss, gasp, moan and she screams in a climax that is cut short when the scene ends (he remains clothed).
 A husband and his wife kiss briefly while seated on a couch and he tells her that she excites him and hugs her; he moves and lies on top of her, between her clothed legs (she is still seated) and she says to stop, then kisses him again and the scene ends (sex is implied).
 Several women wear shorts or skirts that reveal thighs and legs from mid-thigh to ankle. Several women wear V-necklines that reveal cleavage. Two women wear long slips that reveal cleavage and lower legs. Four men are shown wearing sleeveless undershirts and one of the men has shoulders and upper arms covered with tattooed designs of circles and barbs. An older man wears shorts that reveal his bare lower thighs and knees. A teen girl's bra straps are visible under the spaghetti straps of her dress.
 Four teen boys in a car ask a teen girl to get in and that they will drive her home; instead, they drive to a park and outside the car, one boy touches the girl's shoulder; she grabs a tennis racket and beats him with it (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) and lectures the others on how to treat a woman.
 A hit man tells an intended female victim that he must rape her ("dirty her") before killing her, but it won't hurt as much if she does not resist; her husband enters the room and stops him (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A mother asks her 17-year-old daughter if she has condoms with her at all times, because one never knows when desire will occur; she goes on to say that her husband took her virginity in a church.
 A man and a woman in a movie kiss at the end of the film.

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A man walks to his apartment door peephole and someone on the other side with a high powered rifle shoots through it and kills the man, who is shown scorched and covered in blood; a man carrying a handgun then shoots the man's wife, teenaged daughter and son (we see so blood).
 Seven Mafia hit men carry handguns, automatic rifles and a rocket launcher into a small town; they shoot a police officer at a police station (we see blood on the victim's chest as he falls), they do the same thing to the only firefighter at the fire station, they then slash the tires of the only two fire trucks and we later see one shoeless foot of a firefighter sticking out from behind a desk and in a pool of blood, along with a bloody hand.
 A hit man with two knives drawn rushes toward a teen boy and the man is shot dead (we see blood spots on the victim's chest). Three hit men are shot and killed (we see some blood and hear shattering glass). Two hit men shoot two elderly men that venture into a street and we see a little blood as the men fall. Two men attempt to protect a woman during a gunfight and they are shot several times and killed by automatic weapons as the woman screams.
 Four hit men fire automatic weapons and one man launches a rocket into a house that blows a wall out; we see the homeowner lying in the backyard, singed but unharmed and he goes inside, grabs a hit man by the throat with a belt and strangles him; a woman stabs a hit man in the belly with a long knife (we see some blood); another hit man is killed by a dog that chews his shoulder and bloody arm; another hit man chases a teen girl and he is struck and killed by a speeding car (the windshield shatters and we see the bloody hit man lying in some blood on the pavement); we later see the dog with gauze wrapped around its leg and a little blood shows through.
 A sequence of Mafia interrogation scenes shows three men punching a bloody-faced man as he laughs while tied in a chair; another man screams as he is lowered into a barrel of steaming acid; a man sits tied in a chair and he appears torn and bloody around the shoulders and face; a man is seen breaking another man's leg using a small sledgehammer. A man hammers a nail into a dead man's bloody hand (this happens below the frame and the scene ends). A dead man's thumb is mailed in a plastic bag to an elderly man in a prison cell; he takes a fingerprint from the thumb and tells a younger prisoner, "It's not him."
 Teen boys trap two bullies in a corner and one of the boys beats them with a ball bat (we see blood on their faces) and they are tossed against a wall. A 14-year-old boy receives a bad beating in a restroom from two older bullies on his first day of school and his cheek is shown bruised and red. A plumber is late and gives excuses to the male homeowner, then tries to overcharge him; in two scenes, we see the homeowner beat the man with a ball bat until it breaks (the victim becomes bloody) and a man puts the victim into the back of plumbing van. A teen girl taken to a park instead of home by four boys (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) beats one of them several times in the face and head with a tennis racket until it breaks and we see a little blood. In two separate scenes, a teen girl beats up one of two other girls in the high school restroom; we see a little blood on their faces and around their mouths. A teen girl knocks another teen girl out by punching the top of her head and she takes her cell phone.
 A man removes a large plastic bag from the back of his car and we see a bloody arm and hand sticking out of the bag; later we see a bloody face on the corpse and the first man buries it near his home at night. A woman questioned by a hit man has scars on her chin and the back of her hand; her family asks to see his badge, because he identifies himself as a policeman and the camera cuts to a view of him leaving the dwelling with a pile of dead bodies seen lying inside the closing door.
 A man visits a fertilizer company's CEO about chemicals browning the town's water and the CEO is uncooperative; the camera cuts to the first man stopping his car on a road, taking the CEO's motorcycle out of it and slamming it on the ground; he then walks back up the road to the CEO, who has been dragged behind the car (he is bloody all over and his suit and shirt are torn, revealing his bloody stomach); the driver takes out a knife, cuts the victim loose and tells him to keep his mouth shut about this unless he wants to not be able to have children anymore (castration implied).
 We see a man in traction in a hospital bed while another man and a doctor look at X-rays of his leg; it is broken in 12 places and the injured man's face is raw-looking and bloody.
 French citizens insult an American woman in a small grocery store, calling Americans obese and their food fit for monkeys; the woman goes to the back room, tosses a metal device in a pile of cardboard and paper, pours alcohol over it and lights it causing the store to explode into the street after she leaves and we hear that it burned to the ground. A man takes a dynamite bomb and a timer to a vat of fertilizer and sets the clock; it explodes and awakens the townspeople who scream and gasp in their homes.
 A man daydreams of taking another man's head, smashing it into a BBQ grill and making him scream; later, he daydreams of grabbing the mayor and slamming his fingers in his desk drawer. In a dream, an elderly man cuts across his own throat with his forefinger, meaning he will kill another man (the dreamer); the dreamer wakes with a gasp and goes back to sleep.
 A teen girl sees hit men looking for her father; she gets a handgun from an open car trunk while her younger brother grabs two Uzis. Seven hit men are sent to kill a man. A dog barks loudly at his male owner. A teen boy fires a plastic toy laser rifle.
 A teen girl stands on a tall roof at night, talking on a cell phone to a college boy who rejected her and she threatens to commit suicide. A woman in her backyard hosting a BBQ whispers to another woman to put back the silverware unless she wants both arms broken. A teen boy is reprimanded for bullying, assault and threatening other teens at school. A special agent tells an ex-Mafia boss that if the Mafia story is written, the ex-boss will be dead and the ex-boss says that dying in order to write the words is all right. We hear that a woman burns down grocery stores wherever she moves. A few days after going to confession, which we do not hear, a woman argues with a priest who calls her and her family "evil" and tells her to stay away from the church. A man says to another man, "Look at my best friends; I've killed them all. Just joking." After watching the movie "Goodfellas" we hear a lot of shooting off stage and a man tells the audience that one man in the movie was a real gangster who became such after being beaten every day by his father and in school and that the man as a boy killed another boy with a two-by-four.
 A standing dog urinates behind a small pile of wood and we see the stream of urine.

LANGUAGE 8 - About 36 F-words and its derivatives, 7 scatological terms, 13 anatomical terms, 10 mild obscenities, name-calling (idiots, crazy, insane, Miss America, Italian Stallion, rat hole, whorehouse, skanks, geeks, jocks, gossip girls, jerk-off, klepto, dork, FBI pit-boy, incarnation of evil), stereotypical references to families, teenagers, college students, government workers, Americans, the French, geeks, jocks, bullies, FBI agents, the Mafia, 1 religious profanity (GD), 9 religious exclamations (Oh My God, Oh God, For the love of God, Jeez, Jesus, God forbid, Holy [scatological term deleted], a prayer to Jesus).

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman smokes what looks like a marijuana cigarette and inhales deeply as she tells her husband that she quit smoking cigarettes but is stressed right now, and a 14-year-old boy takes pills out of a school nurse's office and sells them pills to another student. Two family dinners include men and women drinking wine with bottles of wine on the dining room table, champagne is opened and drunk by men and women at a home BBQ and some men and women drink wine also, a man pours a glassful of wine into the grass at a BBQ, teen boys in a park drink from bottles of beer from a 12-pack case, a man carries a bottle of wine or liquor in a paper bag out of a package store, a man wraps a bottle of French wine and sends it to his uncle in prison who pours two glasses and shares with a cell mate, and a woman and two FBI agents drink small glasses of sherry in their stake-out apartment. A man smokes cigarettes in four scenes outside his home and inside his study, a cigarette lies unlit beside a typewriter, a woman smokes a cigarette outside a house once and inside three times, and we hear that a girl in high school owns the black market on cigarettes in the school (we never see the cigarettes).

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Crime, murder, child abuse among gangsters, prison, the Mafia, the witness protection program, changing unwanted habits, family, relationships, anger, danger, fear, starting over.

MESSAGE - It is hard to change old habits.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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