Sweet Sixteen
Director: Kenneth Loach
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 1.0
Young man sells drugs to buy his dear old mum a caravan after she gets out of jail by selling drugs - incidentally, his mother is an addict herself, so therefore he's indirectly contributing to the system that brought her down. It's a movie so obsessed with its own grimness that it takes you absolutely nowhere - the beatings and bleeding and bruising amount to nothing and no one learns from anything. Is it "realism" or some form of manufactured drudgery? Four particularly irksome bits: (1.) a sarcastic shot of a rainbow follows a scene of garbage is picked through, (2.) the Pretenders' gorgeous "I'll Stand By You" accompanies a montage of drug dealings, (3.) the lead character's good buddy goes insane at the drop of a hat and (4.) after the lead character attempts to strangle his sister and leaves the room, the camera lingers over her incapacitated body for several seconds for you to 'soak in' the pain.
