A pair of great actors (Maria Bello, Michael Sheen) can do only so much for Shawn Ku’s grim little pageant of misery, the latest in a long line of movies inspired by the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
They play a couple with a frayed marriage who are brought closer together when their progeny opens fire on a college campus before taking himself out. We don’t see this, only his parents fleeing notoriety at the home of her brother (Alan Tudyk) and the brother’s increasingly uncomfortable wife (Moon Bloodgood).
Desperately trying to assess their own responsibility, if any, for their son’s horrible crime, Bello and Sheen end up at a hotel where booze and sex can go only so far to dull their pain. But even with them, the relentlessly grim “Beautiful Boy” ends up being an endurance test.