father and son – We Are Movie Geeks

SOVEREIGN – Review

*(l-r) Jacob Tremblay as Joe Kane and Nick Offerman as his dad Jerry Kane, in SOVEREIGN. Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment*

It is not kings but citizens as sovereign, as Nick Offerman stars as a father of a teen-aged son, played by Jacob Tremblay, in the true story-based thriller in SOVEREIGN, about these followers of the extremist, anti-government Sovereign Citizen belief system. The film also features Dennis Quaid, who plays a police detective, also a father but of a grown son who is training to become a policeman, who the father and son extremists encounter. This tale of two fathers is tense, moving and heartbreaking, as their world views come into conflict.

A little research uncovers that “Sovereign Citizen” is an actual far-right, anti-government world view, based on pseudo-legal beliefs derived from their interpretation of parts of the U.S. Constitution, a version of the Magna Carta and British common law. Those interpretations lead them to conclude that if they reject citizenship of a state or country, they can act as individual “sovereign” entities not constrained by normal laws, such as a requirement to have a driver’s license, and other rules of society.

The film itself gives scant few details on the extremist Sovereign Citizen belief system underlying these tragic events, leaving the film’s audience wondering and unclear on much of it, and in fact, doesn’t even use the term “sovereign citizen.”

Still, SOVEREIGN is very well-acted, well-made and a tense film that blends family drama and crime thriller elements in which things spiral down when opposing belief clash, but it is a film that can be grim and hard to watch. It was directed and written by Christian Swegal, based on a 2010 West Memphis, Arkansas, incident involving a father-son pair who adhered to far-right Sovereign Citizen ideas. In the film, ultimately, your heart breaks for this teenager, a good son to a misguided parent.

Nick Offerman is excellent in this film, and the same can be said for Jacob Tremblay as his dutiful son, in this tragic, true story-based drama/thriller. Jerry Kane (Offerman) is a single parent raising his son Joe (Tremblay) according to these extremist beliefs. Jerry makes a living by traveling around the country giving seminars on legal matters, like ways to avoid foreclosure, by following steps derived from Sovereign Citizen beliefs. Ironically, while Jerry is advising people on legal matters, particularly on real estate, he and his son are facing foreclosure on their rundown, modest ranch home.

What little the film shares with audiences on these extremist views in delivered when Nick Offerman’s character, Jerry Kane, talks about those concepts as he lectures his audiences, in his “legal” seminars and on a podcast where he is a regular guest, both with audiences already familiar with Sovereign Citizen beliefs. The film’s audiences would have benefited from a little more basic details, maybe with some text at the film’s start, explaining what Sovereign Citizen is. We do not get an exposition scene from the authorities (mostly police or the courts) in the film, because the authorities Jerry Kane encounters are as unaware of Sovereign Citizen as most of the film’s audience likely is.

While his father is traveling for his work, the home-schooled Joe Kane is left at home, so he is there alone, when a representative of the bank comes by to serve notice that foreclosure is looming. Joe accepts the official papers, and when the policeman with the bank representative tells Joe he has to clean up the house and property and maintain it so it can be sold, Joe dutifully does that.

Returning home, Jerry is irritated that Joe accepted the legal documents, but not unduly so. He has a solution, which is to go out on a speaking tour, collecting donations at each seminar. Usually Jerry leaves the teen home alone when he hits the road but this time he takes his son along to help, and his son’s dog too. Joe is thrilled to tag along with his dad, and is hopeful that they will raise enough money to make a payment on the mortgage and get to keep their home.

The father and son encounter Dennis Quaid’s police detective after a traffic stop, when dad Jerry is taken into custody for driving without a license and insisting on his pseudo-legal belief that his does not need one because he is “traveling” rather than engaged in commerce. While Jerry sorts out his issues with the law, teenager Joe is place in a juvenile group home and encounters kindly social workers that give him a glimpse of a different world. While still wanting to stay loyal to his father, the home-schooled Joe starts to dream of going to high school and of a different future for himself.

In many ways, Offerman’s Jerry is a good father, supportive of and encouraging to his son, although his extremist worldview blinds him to what might be best for his son Joe. Joe is a good kid, a dutiful son who loves his father, but is less certain about the Sovereign Citizen beliefs.

The film is also a kind of tale of two fathers, as Quaid’s character is also a dad, although of a grown son, Adam (Thomas Mann), who is training to be a police officer. While Offerman’s Jerry is warm and encouraging to his son, Quaid’s character is more inclined to criticism, even critiquing his grown son’s parenting skills with his own infant son. Both Quaid’s and Offerman’s characters have their strong beliefs about the world, one conventional and the other extremist, and both have loving sons who are eager to please them. But the fathers diverge in their interpersonal styles with those sons, just as they do in their worldviews, although not in the ways you might assume.

As events unfold with the bank and Jerry Kane’s belief system clashes with the way the world really works, things start to spiral down for both the Kanes, and tension builds in the film. A moment of violence both raises that tension to a high-pitch, and brings Quaid’s character back into their sphere, as the film rushes to its stark conclusion.

SOVEREIGN is a heartbreaking study of a father-son relationship impacted by extremist views, and a belief system (about which the film is unnecessarily vague) at odds with the real world, told in parallel with another father-son relationship. The story of the fathers and their sons is both gripping and moving because it is true, but ultimately, the film’s story is also a sad, grim experience, with tragic consequences all around.

SOVEREIGN opens in theaters in select cities and is available to rent or buy starting Friday, July 11, 2025.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars

NOWHERE SPECIAL – Review

*(L_R) Daniel Lamont and James Norton in director Uberto Pasolini’s NOWHERE SPECIAL. Courtesy of Cohen Media*

James Norton plays an Irish single father of a 4-year-old boy in director Uberto Pasolini’s touching, bittersweet drama about a loving parent trying to do the right thing for his son.

James Norton plays an Irish single father of a 4-year-old boy in this touching drama about a loving parent trying to do the right thing for his son while he still has time. Directed by Uberto Pasolini, this Ireland-set family drama has delightful, wholly believable, even funny scenes between father and son, a sweet but independent-minded four-year-old, scenes which will bring a smile of recognition from parents. The other side of this tale is more bittersweet, because of what the father is trying to do: find the right new family and home for his son, before his terminal cancer robs him of that ability. The charm of those warm, funny everyday moments between father and son, and the remarkable chemistry between James Norton and young Daniel Lamont as four-year-old Michael, are the keys to why this film is perfectly balanced, between the sweet appeal of those father and son moments and the heartbreak of the situation the father is in, in this impressively-acted, moving, bittersweet tale.

Inspired by a true story, director Uberto Pasolini handles all this with great skill. This whole story takes place in an ordinary modest world of a low-income working man, and we see him deal with ordinary difficulties of life, like car breakdowns, preschool issues, working enough to affording groceries and the bills, even as his health fades. It is a dramatic story but Pasolini tells it is a way that avoids melodrama or sentimentality. Keeping it grounded and subtle makes it far more affecting, particularly with Norton’s fine performance, and the film’s wonderful father-son connection.

John (James Norton) is a self-employed window washer who is a single parent to his son Michael (Daniel Lamont). Mom is not in the picture, having been overwhelmed with parenthood after their partying pre-child lifestyle, and she left shortly after Michael’s birth to return to her family in Russia. Faced with parenthood on his own, dad stepped up, changed his life and became the responsible parent his son needed. Now at 35, John has built a stable, happy life for his son. His cancer diagnosis came as a shock, but even more so when he was given only a few months to live. John is now determined to use those remaining months to find the perfect new home for his son, while concealing what is happening to his health.

Often in real life, we see this parenting situation go the other way, with dads bolting and moms stepping up to be the responsible parent. It is one of several things that makes this quiet little family drama so good and so unusual. Another are the fine performances, and the realistic, down-to-earth way the story is told. Those charming father and son scenes help us cope with the father’s hard circumstances and choices, and give the film a little lightness and even touches of humor through Michael’s childish antics.

The father works with a social worker and a placement agency to find the one family who is right for his son, while trying to keep everything in Michael’s life as normal and steady as possible. It is not always easy, coping with all the usual challenges of life and parenthood, while struggling to keep working to pay their bills despite failing health, and still continuing his quest to find the perfect new home for Michael. The film alternates between those wonderful scenes with dad and son, and dad going about his work as a window washer, coping with ordinary life, and his meetings with the social workers helping him find the right home for the little boy. From time to time, the father and son visit homes of prospective parents, some of whom seem good candidates and some that don’t.

Something that will seem surprising to American audiences is how much help this single father gets from the social agencies and the time the caring social workers spend with him, as well as the lengths they will go to in helping him find the best home for his son. It is a portrait of a completely different, much more functional system than typical in this country.

That alternating pattern of scenes with just father and son and scenes of the father’s work and search, give us a needed emotional break from the difficulties the father faces. Every scene is presented in a realistic way, free of over-blown emotion, just quiet but touching moments in which the actors weave their magic. The photography is likewise subtle, unobtrusive but effective, giving everything an appealing naturalness.

Despite the ticking clock of his diagnosis, the father is remarkable picky about the family he will accept. He is looking for a magic combination of parents who will understand his son and those whose home has the right warmth and stability. Some of the homes he visits seem so good – well-off parents that can offer his son an education and future John never could and in a large home in a beautiful, semi-rural setting – that you wonder why he is still searching. But something isn’t quite right, so the search goes on. Some parents are more working-class like John, others more financially well-off and upper-class. Some have other children, others looking to adopt a first child. Some families are warm, others relaxed, others more strict. There are suburban ones, city ones; some down-to-earth, and some that look wonderful at first but reveal their darker side when he visits. Still he hesitates.

At first, John is certain about the kind of family he is searching for but as he meets them, he becomes less certain of whether he can judge them on a brief meeting and whether he knows his son well enough to make this decision for him, one that will impact his whole childhood. We eventually learn a but more about the dad’s own family history to give us insight on why he is working so hard to find the perfect home. Dad also is determined to conceal his illness from his son, who he thinks is too young to understand. John hopes to move him to another loving home before that illness becomes too obvious. That is a lot of pressure on this hard-working, loving, single parent.

James Norton is remarkable in this role, expressing the emotional complexity of the father’s feelings in a nuanced, layered performance. The scenes with the boy are magical, so filled with a perfect mix of lightness and real life, that we almost forget what is going on with the dad, a perfect escape for us as well as the father. Young Daniel Lamont is impressive as the boy, and was actually four-years-old at the time. He has a strong on-screen presence, even at times bringing to mind Jackie Coogan in Chaplin’s THE KID. Lamont speaks few words but his expressive face and eyes do it all, engaging with Norton and conveying a curious child who seems to know his own mind despite his young age. Norton does a marvelous job with the young actor, and he also effectively lets us see how the father’s joy in those moments with his on propel him forward as he deals with his increasingly life. As John races time to find the right home, that perfect fit, Norton also portrays him coming to grips with his own mortality, in between hard work as a window cleaner, dealing with difficult customers, school issues and ordinary life.

NOWHERE SPECIAL is remarkable, touching film, a quiet little drama that is hard to forget, and which finds a perfect balance between the warmth and often playful appeal of the father and son scenes, and the heartbreak of the father’s situation and his daunting task of finding the perfect new home for his son. The film’s low key approach lets the actors’ performances shine through, making this a much more moving film than something heavy on sentimentality would have been.

NOWHERE SPECIAL opens May 10, 2024 in theaters.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

ABOUT MY FATHER – Review

*Sebastian Maniscalco as Sebastian and Robert De Niro as Salvo in About My Father. Photo Credit: Dan Anderson. Courtesy of Lionsgate*

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco plays a man named Sebastian Maniscalco while Robert De Niro plays his father Salvo, in the comedy ABOUT MY FATHER. Maniscalco and De Niro as father and son are the major delight in this otherwise mildly funny, warm-hearted comedy. It is a comedy about family but not really a family comedy as there are bits of adult humor.

Dad Salvo (De Niro) is a hairstylist (don’t call him a barber!) from a long line of hardworking, hard-scrabble, stoop-postured, Sicilian scowlers, but Salvo left Sicily to immigrate to America to give his son a better life. However, his second-generation Italian-American son has fallen for someone who is not a fellow Italian-American – an artist named Ellie (Leslie Bibb) whose immigrants ancestors came over a little earlier – on the Mayflower. When Sebastian is invited to her family’s big 4th of July weekend celebration at her parents’ posh estate, Salvo, a widower who served in the U.S. military, objects to being left alone on a holiday that means so much to him. But soon-to-be fiancee Ellie has the solution: invite Dad too – which sends Sebastian into a panic at the thought of his opinionated grumbler father coming along for a weekend where Sebastian hopes to impress Ellie’s family. Actually dad Salvo is cool to the idea after first too, not wanting to spend an uncomfortable weekend with the idle rich he disapproves of. But when son Sebastian tells him he intends to propose to Ellie and asks his father for the treasured family ring as her engagement ring, Salvo decides he has come along and determine if her rich family measures up to his standards, which include hard-work, penny-pinching and family-first values.

You get the idea. Father and son are at odds in a fish-out-of-water comedy about working-family guys in the land of the country club. But rather than jokes built around working class Italian Americans or immigrants trying to impress the posh family, ABOUT MY FATHER turns the tables on that old premise of a meet-the-family comedy, and instead pokes fun at the foibles of the very rich. It is still humor built on stereotypes but now it is stereotypes about the pampered, clueless rich who are the target. The comic situation pits father against son and vice versa, with Maniscalco’s character hoping to use the weekend to charm and fit in with his future in-laws, while De Niro sizes up their worthiness to join his family, while grumbles his way through it and disdaining what he considers unacceptable behavior, like ordering off a menu with no prices and keeping peacocks as pets.

Yeah, pretty silly, but there is a little fun in inverting the script for this kind of meet-the-family comedy. Sebastian’s artist girlfriend is more down-to-earth than her family but her quirky, moneyed relatives provide plenty of fodder for comedy, mostly built on familiar stereotypes. Kim Cattrall plays her mom, Tigger McAuthur Collins (yes, Tigger, as in the Winnie the Pooh stories), who is a U.S. Senator. Tigger is just as energetic her namesake but she is also strong-willed, exacting powerhouse. Dad Bill Collins, from an old money family, is a more easy-going personality, but he is also a successful businessman who inherited control of his family’s large, storied luxury hotel chain, which is the big-dog competitor to the rising-star boutique hotel that Sebastian owns and runs. Ellie’s two brothers are their own kinds of messes – Lucky (Anders Holm) is a big-ego screw-up in preppy attire who works for his father, while Doug (Brett Dier) is a sensitive soul dressed in organic fabrics who greets the guests by playing singing bowls and who is generally ignored. Oddly, there is no family member named Tom Collins. How did they miss that one?

Maniscalco and De Niro together are the major highlight and reason to see this light little comedy. As stubborn father and wheedling son, they are a delight together and sometimes even hilarious. De Niro gets to scowl all he wants while Maniscalco does his comedy routine while bouncing off walls in frustration. The supporting cast do well, with Kim Cattrall a stand-out as the blue-blooded, imperious, control-freak Tigger, followed closely by David Rasche as husband Bill who smooths over the ruffled feathers.

Sebastian Maniscalco co-wrote the script and it draws on his stand-up humor enough that it should please fans. The turnabout script is kind of fun, and there are some laughs in there with jokes about loud striped shirts, men in pastel pants, country clubs and peacocks, and jokes aimed at the rich and powerful. But there are also some rather cringe-worthy comedy bits, like one about lost swim trunks, that go on too long.

Otherwise, the humor is light, the plot slight, with a nice little message about the importance of family. This comedy is more mildly funny than laugh out loud but Maniscalco and De Niro are appealing together.

ABOUT MY FATHER opens Friday, May 26, in theaters.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars

OLD HENRY – Review

*Tim Blake Nelson in the Western OLD HENRY. Courtesy of Shout! Studios and Hideout Pictures.*

The classic Western rides again, with Tim Blake Nelson playing a quiet widowed farmer with teen-aged son on a hardscrabble Oklahoma farm, who takes in a wounded man found with a bag full of money and soon finds trouble follows. Writer/director Potsy Ponciroli’s low-budget indie Western action film OLD HENRY sports a much better than expected cast, and is elevated greatly by Tim Blake Nelson in a rare lead role.

OLD HENRY evokes classic Westerns, with its tale of an aging widowed farmer with a teen-aged son, defending his homestead when a group of armed men come looking for the wounded stranger they took in, and the bag of loot he had with him. Both the stranger and the men who have come looking for him claim to be lawmen, leaving the farmer to decide who to believe. But this farmer proves to have both more determination and surprising skills once the shooting starts, raising questions about his identity.

It is the classic lone man against many Western. In 1906 Oklahoma, Henry (Nelson) and his son Wyatt (Gavin Lewis) are working their little farm alone, struggling to get by without the help of a then-new invention, a tractor, but with a little help from the farmer’s late wife’s brother Al (Trace Adkins) who has the neighboring farm. Young Wyatt is itching to go off and leave farming behind, and chaffing under his stern, Bible-quoting father’s over-protectiveness. When the farmer spots a rider-less horse with a bloody saddle wandering onto his property, Henry feels bound to investigate. In an nearby creek bed, he finds an unconscious, nearly-dead stranger with a bag full of cash. Old Henry knows it is trouble as soon as he sees that money and his initial impulse is to walk away. Instead he slings the unconscious man across his saddle and brings the wounded man and the bag of loot back to his homestead.

Back home, Henry quickly hides the loot. He tends to the stranger’s wounds with skill but ties him to the bed, showing a level of wariness that surprises his son. When the wounded man, Curry (Scott Haze) awakes, he tells them he is a lawman but Henry remains suspicious. Soon a posse of three men show up, led by a man named Ketchum (Stephen Dorff) sporting a badge, and also claiming to be lawmen, looking for the wounded man.

Earlier violent scenes have raised our doubts about the claims of Dorff’s Ketchum and his companions Dugan (Richard Speight Jr.) and a Mexican tracker named Stilwell (Max Arciniega) to be the law. But it is the farmer’s cool, steely nerves and skilled response suggesting a hidden past that really intrigues. When the shooting inevitably starts, Henry’s skill with a gun raises questions about who he really is.

The heart of the film is about the father and son, although there is plenty of action too. There is a lot of classic Western here, including the combination of gruffness and tenderness in the father-son relationship and the son challenging his underestimated father, but also a touch of “a special set of skills” contemporary action thriller. However, it takes awhile for director Ponciroli to get around to the action, despite the film’s fairly brief running time.

The story is set in Oklahoma but looks more like Tennessee, where it was actually shot. It is not the usual movie image of Oklahoma’s dry grassland plains, although eastern Oklahoma is a likely match. The director reportedly found this location in Watertown, Tennessee, and was taken with how hidden and forlorn the old homestead looked, and took the location as the inspiration for the story. However, the writer/director decided to relocate the story in Oklahoma. Mismatched location aside, the cinematography by John Matysiak is strong, effectively giving a sense of isolation to the farmstead and a kind of rough beauty, while the costumes and production design gives the proper period feel.

The director seems to go out of his way to make the slight Nelson look even smaller, with an over-sized hat and casting a young actor as his son who fairly towers over him. It just sets up the audience to further underestimate the quiet unassuming farmer before the fireworks begin. Once unleashed, Nelson is masterful in the shootout sequence against the even-larger group that eventually shows up to the fight, surprising his son most of all.

What is not surprising is that Tim Blake Nelson’s performance makes this film, supported well by Stephen Dorff as the principle baddie and the other cast members. A long-time character actor, whose breakout role in the Coen brothers’ O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU brought him a level of stardom, Tim Blake Nelson truly delivers in this too-rare lead role.

OLD HENRY opens Friday, Oct. 1, at theaters in select cities.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

HERE WE ARE – Review

The soundtrack to Charlie Chaplin’s THE KID opens the father-son tale HERE WE ARE, award-winning Israeli director Nir Bergman’s heart-warming, insightful drama about a father’s devotion to his son, who is on the autism spectrum. Dad Aharon (Shai Avivi) willingly gave up his successful career as an artist to care for his son Uri (Noam Imber). The two are very close and have built a life of reassuring routine that involves Chaplin’s film about a father and son, trips on the train, bike rides, and pasta stars for lunch. But Uri is a young adult now and Aharon’s ex-wife, Uri’s mother, Tamara (Smadar Wolfman), thinks it is time for him to move to a group home with other young people with autism. Tamara supports father and son financially and, further, a judge agrees with her and there is a court-order that allows her to move her son to the nice facility she has picked out.

Aharon resists, insisting Uri is not ready, but eventually he is resigned to the move. The day of the move, Aharon and Uri take one of their train outings in the morning but when time comes to go home and get ready to move, Uri has a melt down and refuses to get on the train. Aharon makes a snap decision to go on the run with Uri, convinced his son is not ready for the change.

The journey takes them through several locations, a road trip that proves to be an eye-opening experience, revealing strengths and limitations of both father and son, aspects obscured before in their quiet routine. Bergman’s beautifully constructed film uncovers these details in masterful style but the power of the film finally rests on the two wonderful performances at the story’s center. Both Shai Avivi as Aharon and Noam Imber as Uri are outstanding, flawlessly portraying nuances of the characters and their close relationship. Bergman brilliantly uses the Chaplin film as a touchstone, another story of a close father and son fleeing the authorities, evoking it through the recurring music and clips and moments in the story.

The film gives a touching and realistic view of the challenges of autism and Noam Imber’s performance shows us a young man who is his own person, not just his diagnosis. Shai Avivi’s performance as the father is moving, touching, filled with love and commitment to his son, and doing what is best for him.

HERE WE ARE is a wonderful, moving film experience, one well worth seeking out. Director Nir Bergman, and actors Noam Imber and Shai Avivi all won Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscar, three of the four this Israeli-Italian drama won. This human drama touches our hearts, but also offers an honest portrait and true insights on their experience, until the story reaches its satisfying conclusion.

HERE WE ARE is part of the virtual St. Louis Jewish Film Festival 2021, which starts Sunday, June 6, and runs through Sunday, June 13. Tickets are $14 per film, or an All-Access Pass for all 13 festival films, plus a bonus short, is $95. Tickets and passes give viewing access to all members of a household. All films and discussions can be viewed anytime during the festival, except for BREAKING BREAD, which is only available June 6-8. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit the festival website at stljewishfilmfestival.org.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

BEAUTIFUL BOY – Review

Timothe Chalamet as Nic Sheff and Steve Carell as David Scheff star in BEAUTIFUL BOY. Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

Addiction is an issue that seems to touch everyone in some way, directly or in directly, through family or friends. In BEAUTIFUL BOY, Timothee Chalamet gives a heart-wrenching performance as a teen who goes from alcohol to meth despite being a good student with a promising future and the support of his loving father, played by Steve Carrell. Based on dual memoirs by the father, David Sheff, a freelance writer, and his son Nic, BEAUTIFUL BOY takes us on the harrowing roller coaster ride of addiction, recovery and relapse, as this family goes through the steps of secrecy, denial, treatment and dashed dreams.

Timothee Chalamet, who many audience may know from his Oscar-nominated role in last year’s CALL ME BY YOUR NAME or his role in LADY BIRD, plays Nic Sheff, a bright boy from a financially-comfortable, loving family. Nic seems to have everything going for him yet he falls into addiction. Raised by his father (Carrell) and stepmother Karen (Maura Tierney) after his parent’s divorce when he was young, Nic lives in an idyllic home in the woods outside San Francisco, where his younger brother and sister play in the sprinkler and his artist step mother paints. His father is proud that his son has been accepted by every college where he applied, so he is taken aback when his son hints that he might not want to go to college. Angrily arguing, son Nic drops the subject and resumes his pleasant facade.

Flemish director Felix van Groeningen has a rare gift in having two memoirs to draw on for this drama, his first in English. In exploring this family’s journey through addiction. BEAUTIFUL BOY is able to present both the father’s viewpoint and his son’s view of this experience, which the director does by shifting focus from one to the other. Early on, Carrell’s David is focused on how close he and his son are, reinforced in a series of flashbacks to Nic’s childhood, and his disbelief that there could be something going on with him of which he was not aware. Reading Nic’s journals provides a startling wake-up call and insight on his son’s inner growth and buried turmoil, something any parent might note.

Nic’s mother, played by Amy Ryan, is involved in her son’s life but David is the primary parent. While David seems a loving parent, his tendency to bossiness, to argue and criticize crops up frequently in his dealing with both his ex-wife and with son Nic. Nic responds by shutting down, and diffusing his father’s pressure with a charming smile and seeming acquiescence.

Director van Groeningen’s drama offers plenty of insights on how this kind of tragedy can happen in any family, even a loving one that seems to being doing everything right. Likewise, Nic seems like a kid unlike to seek refuge in drugs. A talented writer and artist, he is involved in school activities and seems on a good life path, yet Nic progresses from drinking with friends to experimenting with various drugs. When he gets to meth, Nic writes in his journal that “the world went from black and white to Technicolor.” Instantly, it becomes his drug of choice, with disastrous results for everyone around him. It takes David a while to comprehend what is happening with his son, but he is tenacious in his attempts to rescue his son.

Anyone who has encountered addiction first hand knows rescue has to come from within the person addicted, and family and friends can merely help. BEAUTIFUL BOY explores with honesty and realism the various aspects of addiction and this family’s attempt to cope with it. This is not an easy film to watch, particularly for those more directly touched by the subject, but the fine performances and fact-based story, from two viewpoints, gives the film a compelling strength.

The cast is particularly good, with supporting roles played by Kaitlyn Dever as Nic’s girlfriend Lauren and Timothy Hutton as a therapist.

Where the film often falls short is in its heavy-handed score, including the classic blues song St. James Infirmary and the odd insertion of Sunrise, Sunset from “Fiddler on the Roof.” The music is sometimes jarring and damps down any moments of hopefulness.

Nic and his family go through many of the awful experiences of addiction – with bouts of rehab, relapse, brushes with overdose,deceit and denial, and enabling behavior, although, unlike many, Nic seems to avoid serious involvement with law enforcement. Nic’s addiction divides the family, with some wanting to distance themselves and others doing too much.

Timothee Chalamet is outstanding in this difficult role. No matter who far Nic sinks into this whole, Chalamet retains a certain level of our sympathy for his pain and powerless against the drug. Some scenes between him and Carrell are simply heart-rending, as we see both the gulf of understanding between them and the love that wants to bridge it.

This is a worthy subject but a hard film to watch, and it does not end with the most positive note, since recovery is a long process. Chalamet with likely be a name mentioned for awards this coming season, as his performance confirms the depth of his talent, and his performance alone is one reason to take in this true-story drama.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: