VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Reno Rangan The concept was inspired by the real, but I was not expecting a camp like this practically exist. I mean, I'm familiar with juvenile detention and reform centres, not something like this. It was more like an another American thing, especially for kids with the tough attitude and of course who are a junkie. The institution is not the issue, but privatisation was the.You might have heard it a million times that PJ Boudousque was looked alike Ryan Gosling. I thought he was related to him, but he was not. Anyway, it was a perfect launch, might have not an overwhelmed movie, but he got a chance to appear in a proficient role for the first time in front of the camera.A fair quality product for half a million budgets. Slightly a weak narration, especially after a fine first and third act, I felt something was missing in between. I was anticipating a strong conclusion, but it was way stronger and unexpectedly a violent just like 'Bellflower'. I think worth a watch if you limit your expectation.6½/10
Armand a great surprise. not only for the theme, not exactly for acting. but for the admirable art of detail, for the precise tension, for music and for the traces after its end.a film who has the gift to give the emotions of a passing way. a film about small , ordinaries things. nothing complicated, nothing too special. only a story about people, world, error and justice. each of that does it more than a movie about the teenagers difficult cases. short, it is an useful movie. for its artistic virtues. for carefully build of story, for the lead character who translate the life profound sense in a not common manner. a film about pillars of existence. in right manner, with delicate force.
ddcharbon This film has a political agenda, one I happen to agree with. That is, there's something wrong with juvenile detention facilities that are de facto concentration camps, that have no legal oversight or laws pertaining to them and where many young men have died over the last thirty years and whose only justification for this legal carte blanche is that the parents are the ones "sentencing" their kids there. The torture is certainly disturbing. But unlike one of the reviewers, I don't see much in the way of character development here. And while the young actor--who is the spitting image of Ryan Gosling (he even _acts_ like him)--does a good job; he develops along very predictable lines. The other characters are fundamentally flat, especially the Colonel who remains a cipher throughout the film: we never learn really why he's such an asshole or what he thinks about his own asshole behavior. Character development for him turns out to be drinking more in the film's third act and fondling his pistol with suicidal thoughts. The film ends very disturbingly and certainly leaves a mark, as it were. But the final confrontation between Brad and the Colonel is absolutely wordless and without much depth--a problem with much of the film. I think it won at the film festivals for the disturbing violence yoked to its liberal politics, not for its storytelling.
Sam Saunders I just saw this movie at its premiere at SXSW. It's an intense film about a young man who is sent to be 'transformed' at what you might call a juvenile detention camp. Things deteriorate as the Colonel, played masterfully by James C. Burns, begins to unravel himself. The film is carried by newcomer PJ Boudousque, a name we should start getting used to. In his first film, he plays Brad Lunders, a teenager haunted by the mistakes of his past but determined to change his future, and that of anyone close to his orbit. His performance is intense and meaningful, saying as much with a look as he might with 100 words. Vincent Grashaw does a marvelous job with all the young cast, each bringing something very special to the film. The score is a triumph.I loved this film, and think for many people involved it will be the start of something big.
