A little boy hides a awful secret, and also enjoys catching mice. This is a dark, and yet beautifully shot, and extremely well written picture. Scenes like the discovery of the wheat field are truly enchanting. Only downside is that the film is Scottish, and the accents are so thick that understanding what any of the characters are saying is a nearly impossible challenge.

(Spoilers) This is the story of a few weeks in the life of twelve-year-old James. The setting is Glasgow in 1973, toward the end of a nine week garbage collector's strike. James lives with his two sisters and parents in a lower-class neighborhood. I would say that James' family was working class, but I could never tell whether his father had a job--his main interests seemed to be drinking and watching television. The rat-infested bags of garbage lining the streets is a good backdrop to punctuate the squalor that James has been born into.James has no male friends to speak of, but he does take up with Margaret, a young girl who is used by the local boys for sexual escapades. I found the extreme realism worked against the movie in many ways. Given James' bleak environment, it is no wonder that his emotional dexterity had been checked. As James, William Eadie effects a remoteness that is believable, but a remoteness that kept me at a distance from connecting with him.There is a little relief offered from the downbeat story line. There is a scene that has James taking a bath with Margaret where the two are enjoying themselves in non-sexual playfulness. On occasion James goes to the outskirts of town to visit a housing project under construction. Beyond the project is an open wheat field that James runs through in a state of ecstasy, delighting in having escaped the claustrophobia of his life in the city. These scenes are effectively filmed to give testament to James' desires for freedom and a better life, desires that his fate will prevent.I give the movie credit for style--the colors and music help with providing emotional content for the episodes. Unfortunately the emotional content was predominantly depressing. I ask myself what I am to take away from a movie like this. I can appreciate the artistry of the presentation, but any further value is hard to come by. I know that poverty exists and lots of people are living dead end lives trapped in miserable situations, so I don't get any better understanding of that. Is a movie like this a plea for some action to be taken to provide more opportunity for such people? Are state-funded housing complexes part of a solution, as hinted at here? I think that if James' family were to get into one of the housing units, they would simply be situating their problems in a better environment. The grim ending shows that director Ramsay is playing this for real, but it's a reality that left me with a sense of hopelessness.

This film about growing up urban in Scotland is masterful in its depiction of life as an unstoppable downward spiral of degradation, social entropy and anomie ending in slime, criminality and despair. Every step of this short and brutal downfall is lovingly illustrated with scenes of filth, coarseness, profanity, idiocy, moral turpitude, ignorance, poverty, intoxication and vermin. It's quite a ride, even though it rather shamelessly borrows a Carl Orff theme that was already made famous by its use in Terrence Malick's "Badlands" for its score and reproduces Mike Leigh's naturalistic atmospheres without the humour and a single glimmer of hope. Should the viewer feel like cleansing his palate after this ordeal, may I recommend two films on the same subject, the poetry and terrors of childhood? They are just as rewarding but without the vomit-inducing sadism and body fluids. They are:(1) "The Steamroller and The Violin"/"Katok i skripka", 1960, URSS, a 42-minute student film by Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the loveliest films ever put together on planet Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053987/), and(2) "The Children Are Watching Us"/"Bambini ci guardano", Vittorio DeSica's first collaboration with neo-realist screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, 1943, an almost forgotten classic, finally on Criterion DVD (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034493/).

i saw this film last night on criterion and couldn't help but notice it's curious similarities with David Gordon green's highly inventive but slightly over-rated "george Washington". Terrence Alick has indeed casted a very long shadow on today's young film-makers. the key for them is to, like Terrence Malick, devoid their films of intellectual and emotional pornography. similar to works of Terrence Alick and other 70's filmmakers in general, this film is just another one of the films that are adding on resurgence of 70's type personal cinema (and my favorite type at that, the slow and lyrical films devoid of over-bearing plot). i think Lynne Ramsay has been in some ways been unfairly overlooked by critics. but she is going to go far, you can just tell with some people. for those who liked this might wanna check out: anything by Terrence Malick, David Gordon green, Kim Ki-duk, Errol morris, Hans Petter Moland, "the return" by Andrei Zvyagintsev and classic McCabe and Mrs. miller.i'm sure i'm missing a lot of names but these film explore in someways similar narrative style.