brilliant actors, brilliant editing

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Former child actress Mackenzie Vega portrays as Sam Gleason,a High School cheerleader who was gang-raped, in this TV movie entitled "The Assault".Gary Weeks co-stars with Vega as the Sam's supportive father Dan together with Khandi Alexander as Detective Jodi Miller who was assigned to investigate the rape case in this television film directed by Jason Winn.Pretty cheerleader Sam got drunk one night after breaking up with her boyfriend footballer Reed.Unfortunately,the rest of the football team took advantage of her drunkenness after Reed left and brought her to a room to rape her.This led to Sam into committing almost committing suicide.After she was hospitalized,Sam,Gary and her friends started to investigate what occurred that night through the collection of data gathered from social media to assist Detective Jodi Miller to bring down the people responsible for it.While it was evident that we are treated to a typical and predictable story having a theme about rape,the performances somehow raised it into becoming a better-than-your average TV movie.Mackenzie Vega did well in her portrayal as Sam as she gets to emote very well from the hurt and trauma that she experienced from getting rape until her determination to bring down the guilty people when no one among the members of the football team and the cheerleaders would talk.It was interesting how the gathering of social media was used.That element of the story provided interest in the story.Finally,one would get treated to an above average Lifetime TV movie having rape themes.

Lifetime Movie inspired by the 2012 Steubenville High School rape case. Cheerleader Vega attempts suicide by self-immolation, setting into motion events that could make the community's beloved football team accountable for a very serious crime. Very dramatic for the better. Still, way too cookie-cutter in terms of structure, and the story unravels more like a mystery/thriller than a drama with something important to say. There's also the need to explain too much, indicating an underestimation of the viewer. Khandi Alexander is memorable as Detective Jodi Miller. Buckner's first role in seven years. Good if you have nothing better to do.**½ (out of four)

Although I generally do not sympathize with those who get too drunk to remember events, "The Assault" greatly succeeds in driving home the all-too-realistic point that there are individuals who take very unfair advantage of such vulnerabilities, use it for personal gain while going way out of line, and then scapegoat-make to deflect blame.In a perfect world, no one would get so drunk. On the other hand, society has its share of menaces and extremely bad influences regardless of states of intoxication involved. This portrayal is frighteningly accurate.With a decent actress portraying the main character, a convincing policewoman determined to bring the wrong-doers to justice, and a no-nonsense father rightfully willing to stick up for his daughter, "The Assault" is genuinely interesting, suspenseful, and cautiously entertaining from start to finish.

This was one of the funniest films I've seen in a while. It had everything one would expect from and love about a Lifetime movie: lead actors who can barely emote, terrible dialogue that oftentimes makes no sense, a heavy handed message that they hit you with harder than a football player hits his wife, homoerotic and incestuous undertones, misunderstandings of technological innovations, and I could go on and on about the great features of this film. It starts with the lead character (let's call her Cheerleader, who can remember the names of these people?) setting herself on fire at a football game and it just gets better from there. At the hospital the doctor tells us she was "sexually assaulted" which we can all tell means she was brutally gangraped by the whole football team. Eventually Cheerleader becomes BFFs BleachBlondDyke and they start sleeping together and they work with HeroicBlackPolicewoman to solve the case and everybody lives happily ever after. And it ended with a blatant lie of a statistic which is always fun.