Good people gone bad

By Nicholas Barber

One is a short, sharp American indie movie set in a suburban fast-food restaurant, the other a forbidding, two-and-a-half-hour Romanian drama set in a remote religious order. But both "Compliance" and "Beyond the Hills" are inspired by events that occurred in the past decade. Both balance heart-wrenching tragedy and inky black comedy. And both zero in on the same question: why it is that good people do bad things.

"Compliance"—the American one—is a crafty chamber piece which plays out over one busy day in a depressing KFC surrogate. A policeman phones up and instructs the harried manageress (Ann Dowd) to strip-search a junior colleague (Dreama Walker), and such is his mastery of flattery and intimidation that she never thinks to ask who’s really on the other end of the line.