Other Crap

DiCaprio Delights in musical comedy remake: "Crime and Punishment: The Little Raskol"

• The action of the drama is moved from dreary St. Petersburg to sunny Santa Barbara. Raskolnikov is still a poor and disturbed student, but now a college sophomore at the University of California grappling with the moral conundrum of whether to pledge a fraternity filled with the braying and vapid illiterati whose company he scorns, or to descend into the yawning abyss of moral degradation that awaits him in a dingy off-campus studio apartment (he chooses the latter).
• The psychic torture of Raskolnikov's dilemma – whether it is morally justifiable to take the life of a pawnbroker to save, as he sees it, the life of his sister – is brilliantly brought to life by DiCaprio in the tap-dance number "Death Ain't No Slouch for a Christian", in which he attempts to justify the killing by the twin beliefs that his sister's life will be better, and that the pawnbroker will go to heaven.