Censorship is one of those topics that spark heated debates among many circles depending on the target material and reasons for the censoring. It seems that every other week or so there is a report on the news somewhere about some controversy or another revolving around a scene in a movie, part of a videogame or something on a TV show. No matter what the motive behind the artist director of the project, someone somewhere is going to be offended, but at what stage of censorship and decency do you have to draw a line?

This is one such issue that strikes a cord with me and every time I see this topic on the news it gets my blood boiling. Instead of not partaking in the objectionable subject matter there are some extremist groups out there that go to length such as banning the material all together so no one can view it. It wasn't too long ago that I caught a special on A&E (at least I think that's the channel I was watching) that featured an ongoing lawsuit involving some Hollywood director's and a group of companies editing out all unfavorable parts of the film and selling it as a cleaned edition.

Beauty and what is considered objectionable is purely in the eye of the beholder, but that doesn't give anyone the right to censor copyrighted material or force the product from being produced or distributed. The bottom line is that as long as the questionable material is only being sold or rented to the appropriate audience that it's rated for, nobody has a right to censor it. Heart of the Beholder is a movie that carries that very message and is based on a true story about religious extremists and the length they'll go to see that no one in their community rents films that they deem to be filth.

Heart of the Beholder is written, produced and directed by Ken Tipton and he is the driving force behind this project, mostly because this is the story of his life. While some of the events seem to have been exaggerated to aide in the translation to film, the heart of the story surrounds the events that rocked the foundations of a man leading the American dream. Names have been changed in the film though, so our main character is a gentleman named Mike Howard (Matt Lescher).

Mr. Howard seemed to have it all, a beautiful wife, a lovely daughter and a thriving business. You see, Mike was a visionary in his time and back in the very early 80's he took a leap of faith to start a video rental chain in St. Louis and became the success story everyone dreams about. Everything was going great for him, his business and his family until he made the decision to rent The Last Temptation of Christ at his stores.

Since the bulk of the rental and distribution chains refused to carry the controversial film, Mike was unwavering in his resolve and didn't see the harm with renting one particular movie. He apparently didn't count on a rabid religious extremist group that was lead ruthlessly by Reverend Matthew Brewer. It wasn't just this one particular film that the group wanted gone from their community and soon many more titles were on their chopping block for some silly reasons. Things that any sane person would scoff at were drudged up like the fact that Splash promotes bestiality because Tom Hanks has sex with a mermaid.

Needless to say, Mike put his foot down and stood up against the demands of these whackos, but that single act of defiance would prove to be his downfall. What followed was the extortion of a corrupt prosecutor, a lawsuit that crippled the Howard family and their business and even the abduction of their daughter. With his life and dream shattered, Mike searches for a way to exact his revenge on those that wronged him.

While the film is a fantastic representation of the length that some fanatics are willing to go to and how it affects the guy on the other side of the fence, some portions toward the end just don't fit with the overall message of the movie. I find it hard to believe that the sequence of these events ended in such a fashion in real life since it feels like typical Hollywood warm fuzzy ending with everything but the tagline "and they lived happily ever after". Even so, the overall message of Heart of the Beholder is a strong one and the movie does a great job of representing the hell that this family went through and the seed of corruption that took them down.

For his relative inexperience with such matters, Tipton does a great job with this film and it shows that he was very passionate about the project. Despite the overall result of the movie, there are quite a few points where the inexperience and low budget are very prominent. While there is a lot of powerful acting found here, there is also a slew of horrible overacted characters and scenes that border comical in their lameness. Also, instead of just writing a devastatingly truthful script, he added in a slew of one liners and jokes to lighten the mood, but the problem is there are a few too many.

I had a hard time discerning the emotional focus of the film since the script, like it's actors, are on a rollercoaster of emotion all of the time. We see several scenes where Mike is in tears and on the verge of a mental breakdown, only to spout out a joke and a smirk a moment later. Overall it feels like Heart of the Beholder tries too hard to entertain the watcher instead of just impacting them with the gut wrenching story.

For a movie without a lot of budget ($500,000) or filming time, the production values are very high and the cast is great for the most part. The smaller budget and underground nature of the film didn't allow for any big name Hollywood celebrities, but what it does feature are a lot of prominent TV and small role movie actors. Names like Michael Dorn, Sarah Brown, Arden Myrin, Greg Germann, Anne Ramsay, John Prosky and Priscilla Barnes may be recognizable to you, but probably the best role played in this movie is by Matt Lescher as Mike.

Heart of the Beholder presents us with a mixed bag of quality, mostly due to a low production budget. It is displayed with a 16:9 anamorphic widescreen transfer and offers some very sharp, clean visuals at times. Unfortunately there are several points where the image goes soft, there's a lot of visible grain in the video and we even see some compression artifacts at times. With a larger budget this movie could have had a nicer transfer, but for an indie film with the money they had the quality isn't horrible considering.

Don't be looking for any fantastic audio options on this disc, because frankly there aren't any. Heart of the Beholder features an English 2.0 audio track that doesn't offer a whole lot in the way of directional sound, but considering the material you don't really need much else. There are no subtitle options of any kind, but given the overall quality of the video and audio it's apparent that most of the budget went towards funding the actors, crew and filming process; not the DVD's aesthetic quality.

While some parts of the film, the audio and video may have left something to be desired, there are actually a decent selection of special features presented on the disc.

Behind the scenes of Heart of the Beholder Volumes 1 & 2 - These two features are separated, but relatively the same thing. They provide a lot of background information about the process of putting this film together and some of the obstacles that Tipton and others involved on the project had to overcome to see it through. The extras feature some commentary with some of the crew about how they got involved with the movie and what interested them enough to devote their time. In total the running time for both of these features combined is roughly eleven minutes.

Interviews - There are four interviews featured in this section of extras, but for the majority these clips were used in the behind the scenes feature. There are a few extra lines in their interviews that didn't make it into the other feature though, so it's worth watching for some more insight. The interviewed are Ken Tipton, Darlene Lieblich (Executive Producer), Matt Letscher and Sarah Brown (Diane Howard).

Deleted Scenes - With seven scenes all together, these deleted ones show some bits of the movie that really didn't need to be there. There are a couple that are worth watching though and I got a kick out of the church lady trying to rent J.F.K.

There is also a hidden short movie, that really doesn't have anything to do with Heart of the Beholder, but it does feature Tipton and Lieblich and a pretty funny situation. It's worth a watch if you want a laugh though it doesn't have anything to do with the film. This feature is accessed by clicking left at the "Main Menu" option on the special features page.

At its core, Heart of the Beholder is a tragic tale of a man living the American dream only to have it stripped away by religious fanatics. It's a very honest and dark look at the lengths some people will go to quench the freedoms of others in the name of decency. In one of the interviews on the special features page, Darlene Lieblich talks about having her life threatened because of her involvement with this movie. It's just remarkable to me that in today's society people can be that closed minded to culture, opinions and individual freedoms.

That being said, it's not the message of Heart of the Beholder that keeps it from being all the movie it could have been, it's some questionable acting and poor writing. So many of the characters are overacted to the point they become a parody to the serious tone of the movie, and that serious tone is shattered by some inappropriately timed jokes. Everything falls together too conveniently near the end and gives the film an overall fake feel, even though it's based on a true story.

The DVD boasts some rather low quality audio and video, considering the budget of the film didn't allow for big studio clean up, but there are quite a few notable extras to take a look through. Heart of the Beholder is a powerful and emotional film; it's just not without its flaws. It would make a great rental and is worth watching, but probably not owning for a serious DVD collector.

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