Canadian film 7 Days shares virtually the same plot as The Tortured, right down to the murdered child’s father being a doctor and the method by which the child killer is abducted, while its dir­ector, Daniel Grou, also graduated from TV to make this first feat­ure. There the similarities end. 7 Days is a carefully crafted little gem, from the logic with which the plot is constructed to the cool, distanced and very European style in which the story is told. Whereas The Tortured relies on a ludicrous ‘twist’ to try and shoehorn some moral weight into its tawdry proceedings, 7 Days is a grim and searching look at the nature and effects of revenge. Rather than an unconvincing married couple, here we have a father and husband whose intolerable grief, guilt and anger cut him off from his wife and his society, and who tries to exorcise his own pain  by spending the seven days of the film’s title misusing his medical skills on his victim. There’s not as much gore on show as in The Tortured, but the film manages to generate significantly more power as it plunges headlong into the moral cul-de-sac of relentless vengeance and emerges with a chilling question rather than any kind of answer.