Little Boy Blue

A brilliant job of tying together a complicated group of characters. Ryan Phillippe was brilliant and for his age shows great talent. The approach to each and every delicate situation was handled with tact and tastefully clarified at just the right moment.

Evocative drama deals with some touchy subjects while barely scratching the surface and therefore demanding that the viewer actually think for themselves. Complete with some intriguing characters, thanks to great storytelling and good acting, this has a realistic feel to it. Almost like a generation X "Lone Star" this movie deserved way better attention than it got.

Little Boy Blue is a drama set in a small town in southern USA. You will recognize the landscape and the usual sleazy bar. But there it'll stop.

It the center of the story stands Jimmy who is going to move away from his father he doesn't get along with (and even doesn't know.), his mother that he's very attached to. And his two younger brothers that he's in many ways a guardian to.

That are really good performances in this film, not only from the three leads. Jimmy's brothers are very impressive, I think it's quite unusual to see child actors in American films to act this natural.

It's really nice to have Nastassja Kinski back as a big name again, so she can show what a talented actress she is.

John Savage, who's career in many ways is reminiscent of Kinski's, does a performance somewhere between Marlon Brando and Gary Busey.

(Note: Kinski and Savage also acted together in _Maria's Lovers (1984_(qv).)

This "sleeper" is a masterfully done, complex drama. The story unfolds slowly at first, and the relationships among the characters remain somewhat ambiguous during the first part of the movie. However, once the plot starts to unravel, the film becomes a compelling mystery, revealing only hints of the true horror that propels the action. This is probably Phillippe's best work as an actor; he is given the chance to act--and not simply stand around and look pretty--and he is quite good. Savage and Kinski also deliver powerful performances. You'll probably have no trouble finding this one at the video store, since it didn't get much publicity. But it's definitely worth watching.

We were still talking about this three days after seeing it. So many questions are left unanswered that it is easy to see why studio executives chickened out and didn't hype this as a major theatrical release: they probably decided that Little Boy Blue it is too challenging to the "lowest common denominator" mindset which THEY have created among American movie-goers.

One wonders if Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds would have been released by an American studio nowadays; we think probably not -- some idiot would think that American audiences wouldn't understand, appreciate or care to see a movie which leaves ANY questions unanswered at the end, let alone one which leaves open as many questions as does Little Boy Blue.

Bah! Make a challenging movie and the audience will rise to meet the challenge. Little Boy Blue surely ranks among the most intellectually challenging movies of all time; decades from now film students will probably be writing dissertations about the cryptic symbolism of the book kept in the clothesline pole or the name of Jimmy's dog! This is not to suggest that the movie is an all-time great, but it certainly works on many more levels than that of Ryan Phillippe humping someone in the station wagon.

A Ryan Phillippe movie which forces the viewer to think! No wonder he found it so challenging: directors have had him playing blond pretty boys for so long that he probably had a difficult time portraying a character who is as savvy and insightful as he himself is in real life.