Mean Creek
Director: Jacob Aaron Estes
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 0.5
A mash-up of recent movies: you get half of Larry Clark's Bully, where a group of teens seek revenge on a malicious peer and half of David Gordon Green's George Washington, where said teens are really in touch with their feelings and with their own preciousness. The script is far too calculated to be effective on any level, and the 'bully' (well played by Josh Peck) operates according to the amount of time that has elapsed in the movie - when they want to call off the plan to strip him naked and have him run home, he's gruff, awkward but real; when he discovers the plan to embarrass him, he taunts them further and ensures his own demise. An ending in which the 'killers' 'get away with it' would have added way too many dimensions to the plot, so the last act consists of remorseful looks and pangs of conscience.
