Drama
When a high school senior, Chris, gets in trouble with the West L.A. police for joy riding in stolen cars, his wealthy but neglectful dad hires Chris's older brother Lance to spend time with him and keep him out of trouble. Lance is in the underworld, running guns, so caring for…


Lance
Mrs. Porter

Cop

Chris

Detective

Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.

Fifteen-year-old Chris Mills isn't too happy with his divorcing parents. In fact, he doesn't want them to split at all, so he hires car repair shop owner -- and former attorney -- Archie Corelli to run interference for him and put a stop to the proceedings. It's a match made in heaven because Chris and Archie both have a deep desire to see the right thing done.

Noel struggles to accept his father's remarriage to Agnes and the arrival of his step-sister, Melody. The two grow up harboring a bitter hatred for each other. When their parents die, Noel becomes Melody's legal guardian, much to her dismay. Later, each now married, the two become business partners and eventually grow closer.

After unearthing the camcorder his dying father gave him at his bar mitzvah, a Long Island teenager claws his way into a Manhattan film school — where, with one festival slot on the line and a classmate's film in contention, he must confront the truth that the documentary he's making about everyone else cannot be finished until he stops editing himself, and his father's memory, out of the frame.

The focus is on the disintegration of an idyllic relationship between parents, Marko and Dunja. This is due to a lack of respect, caused by loss of employment and a financial breakdown. In time, the parents are no longer able to bear their burden, which is thus increasingly weighing their children down. In Slovenia, the story from The Basics of Killing occurs on a daily basis, but it could happen anywhere. To those familiar with the phenomenon, the film will be a painful experience, to others, may it be a warning.