Just the other day I was appalled at how the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre invokes a real-life tragedy such as a high school shooting to justify its brand of gratuitous violence. On the other side of the spectrum is a film like The Desperate Hour – a reminder that the most powerful stories about such tragic events don’t focus on violence but on people. The Desperate Hour (which never even makes it physically to the school) doesn’t reach the virtuoso heights of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant or Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique, and it fails to do so because it botches the third act, but remains nonethele...