Boy A.

"Adapted by Mark O'Rowe from Jonathan Trigell's novel, and directed by John Crowley, Boy A is a brutally soulful film that tells the tale of a young man trying to forge a new life and identity after serving time for a murder committed as a boy," writes Ernest Hardy. "The film's both smart and devastating as it unthreads interwoven questions about redemption, justice, and the pivotal role of history in shaping an individual and his actions." Also in the Voice: John Anderson talks with Crowley.

"In some ways Boy A is a throwback to the sooty kitchen-sink realism of early-60s British films by Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson and John Schlesinger, which portrayed a depressed, alienated working class teetering between rage and hopelessness in a stagnant economy," notes Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

Updated through 7/25.

"Delightfully ambiguous mindgames and rapturously exquisite cinematography aside, this is an actor-driven narrative of an endearing shy guy winning over a surrogate father (Peter Mullan), a devoted girlfriend (Katie Lyons) and his co-workers," writes Benjamin Sutton in the L Magazine.

Andrew Garfield's performance as Jack, that is, Boy A, is "career-making" for the Playlist, while New York's David Edelstein finds it to be "an amazingly vivid performance that strikes me as wrong. He's a simpleton, an innocent - more childish in his affect than the kid (Alfie Owen) who plays him in flashbacks."

Back to the Playlist: "'For all its sensitivity, thoughtful sobriety, and sound performances, though, Boy A finally permits itself an excessive number of contrived and/or clichéd gestures,' writes Slant's Nick Schager and he's spot-on."

"Crowley's film is a compassionate antidote to the British (and global) ruling elite's 'law-and-order' mania - a socially regressive preoccupation with containing the population and desensitizing it in the process," argues Joanne Laurier at the WSWS. "Its appearance also reflects a shift in popular mood against this drive."

Howard Feinstein talks with Crowley for indieWIRE.

At Film Forum through August 5.

Updates: "For all the powerfully human sentiment on display here (particularly on the part of Garfield and Mullan), Boy A evinces a specifically tragic northern UK spirit that evokes the work of Shane Meadows or even Andrea Arnold's Scottish-set Red Road, and will make it a bitter pill for many to swallow," writes Chris Barsanti in Film Journal International. "The stabs of warmth that come through the institutional bleakness are intermittent and all the more powerfully felt once dissipated."

"If the possibility of exposure and rejection for bygone transgressions hums queasily under even the most blissful moments, such danger only intensifies Boy A's clear-eyed pathos: the potential for devastation all the more reason to embrace momentary happiness," writes Matt Connolly in Reverse Shot.

"Perfectly portraying Jack's awkward winsomeness, Garfield is precisely the halfway point between Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) and Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan), heartthrob and space cadet," writes Christopher Campbell at Cinematical. "Garfield had me from the first shot, but later, in a long sequence depicting his first night out with his new coworkers, his transition from wondering simpleton to spastic, drug-induced freak (his dance moves are the work of a true physical comedian) to mad heroic avenger, he found a place into a short list of actors I'm most excited about following (Garfield will next be seen alongside Heath Ledger and Boy A costar Katie Lyons in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus)."

Update, 7/24: Mark Olsen profiles Garfield for the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 7/25: "Only time will tell whether Irish director John Crowley's Boy A can tap into the art-house audience that fell for John Carney's Once, and to a lesser extent for Pawel Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love and Shane Meadows's This Is England," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "It's arguably more old-fashioned than any of those movies, channeling a strain of dark British social realism that stretches back to the 1950s, but Boy A is a compelling, compact melodrama that packs an emotional wallop. It's my nominee for sleeper surprise of the summer, at least so far."

"The movie belongs... to Garfield," writes David Fear in Time Out New York: "Feral, paranoid and childlike, his Jack is a walking open wound. It's the type of vulnerable performance that turns an ordinary drama into something truly devastating."

Gary Goldstein, writing in the Los Angeles Times, hopes Garfield "will be remembered at this year's Independent Spirit Awards."

"Boy A is so excessively mannered that the story's human element (misunderstood youth, society's indifference) is lost," writes Armond White in the New York Press.

Posted by dwhudson at July 23, 2008 3:01 AM