Detainment

2/14/2026

There are two really impressive and emotionally-charged performances from Ely Solan and Leon Hughes here but the rest of the feature seems uncomfortably prurient. It was huge news in the UK in 1993 when toddler James Bulger was abducted and murdered by two older children, so this dramatisation is bound to touch nerves as it uses selected transcripts from their police interviews to map out just what happened on that day. These events took place long before there was CCTV everywhere so piecing things together requires not just their increasingly panic-stricken and upsetting statements, but also observations of their encounters with other citizens concerned that this youngster appeared to be in distress, but who were unable to directly intervene in what ultimately became a tragedy. My problem