Young Izzy (Izak), aged 8 or 9, is growing up with younger siblings in New York city in a troubled family. Mother struggles to cope and is close to a breakdown, the father is in a suffering from a stroke and is completely dependent on help, and not able to communicate. The insurance doesn't help, and she is forced to keep her husband home, while she still has to work, and a mother which is the worst nagging kind. Izzy is resourceful but troubled and is taking it out his own way, by breaking into apartments in his own apartment building where no one is home and even makes small fires on the floor. He finds out which apartments by calling the buzzers. Where there's no answer, he breaks in by windows or such. He lies, steals and do other kinds of destructive and dangerous behavior.
The film, which is second outing by New Yorker Jacob Kornbluth has a good plot, mixed with bit clichés and new thinking, but is immensely annoyingly made in more than one way. The actors are doing OK, and they are picked from an upper shelf, and they are all great. Young Izzy is played by first timer Michael Silverman, and deserves more chances in films.
But what's awful, is the music by a prince Paul, which is really bad. It's bad mixed and quite tedious, and when it's not the rap music, it some kind of elevator music. Simply some quite annoying choices. Sometimes there's a couple if colored kids popping up, out if context, like a Greek choir singing profound rap songs with an awful language. This feels offensive, and most certainly is supposed to. The music does a really bad job, because it makes you hate the movie.
Too bad, because there's both talent here, good morals, and a good story about kids with parents not able to be there like they should. It's pointing no fingers. The film just illustrates some reasons to kids not behaving, and even start off a criminal run. There's probably a lot to analyze here, and as such the film is interesting. Too bad it annoys you along the way. I'm sure that wasn't the plan.
The film gives answers, and is not without hope. Still, if you can endure the score, you'll have a OK watch, but don't expect to be too much uplifted by watching this, though this is a depiction of the real world out there.
