Beautiful Boy

It can be hard to evaluate a film such as this. Its striking realism is both a gift and a curse: seeing its protagonists in their naturally empty and shell-shocked state for much of the film doesn't make for entertaining viewing - nonetheless its emotional scenes pack such a weighty punch, heightened by Sheen and Bello's terrific performances, you can truly feel their agony.

While the fallout from the unconscionable number of tragedies that inspired this film tends to focus mainly on the perpetrator, then on the victims and their families, "Beautiful Boy" wisely forces its audience to think about the side of the story that is rarely heard.

Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) are a struggling couple who are sleeping in separate rooms. He's looking at apartments while she still hopes to save the marriage with the next family vacation. Their son Sammy (Kyle Gallner) is away at college. He's miserable and he goes on a shooting spree killing himself and many others. The onslaught of media forces them to stay with her brother Eric (Alan Tudyk) and his wife Trish (Moon Bloodgood).

Bello and Sheen are using all their acting skills to drive this movie. The movie strips away all the power. The shooting takes place off screen. The movie doesn't allow Sammy to explain his actions. Kyle Gallner just doesn't have much screen time. It's all about the parents struggle to find meaning. It's a movie of misery. It's admirable but it grinds down the audience with its unrelenting bleakness.

It seems that Hollywood, especially lately, has been in the habit of giving us films dealing with parents suffering the loss of a child. We see them scream, we see them cry, we see them go through the same routine. Beautiful Boy takes this theme and puts a unique, much more tragic, spin on it. Michael Sheen and Maria Bello play parents who lose their college-age son, but worse is their son died after shooting up his school. So along with them having to grieve the loss of their boy, they have to suffer the scrutiny of the media attacking their son and them publicly, along with fighting themselves in trying to figure out what led to this awful thing happening. They fight with whether they're responsible, whether they should take time to grieve or try to go back into things and as many other things as you can think of in this struggle for normalcy in understanding when everything else is fighting against them.

Of course anything dealing with themes like this gives way to a lot of opportunity for melodrama. There's a subplot with a novelist that is very silly and expected and a few other scenes that rang false, but for the most part the film was surprisingly honest and from the heart. These characters suffer in real ways and even though the film initially splits the two into stereotypes, Bello having the hysterical screams and disbelief and Sheen with the stunned silence, as it progresses they both go through phases of devastation, denial and just a need to understand and get past it. It doesn't do anything particularly unique in how they grieve, but the two performers make you feel everything these characters go through. They bring a lot of power to their roles and it can definitely hit very hard at times.

Both Sheen and Bello have always been fine actors who rarely get the chance to demonstrate their immense talents. Here they are given full opportunity to let their skills show and neither of them hesitate to do so. Whether they are having a shouting match in a hotel room, consoling one another in tears or just silently trying to deal with this huge tragedy, it's hard to take your eyes off either of them. It definitely goes down the expected path, but these two make it well worth watching with their powerhouse performances and I did admire the slight turn on what had kind of become a tired setup. Making the son this kind of person added a lot of layers to the struggle these two had to go through.

Beautiful Boy is beautiful.

Its beauty lies in the honest and real way it shows the effect on the parents, family and community. It is powerful, emotional and altogether well made.

I like that I haven't seen a movie like this before. This is something happening in our country but we don't talk about it. We don't do anything before or after to help those affected; especially not the family of the culprit.

The acting is spot on. Maria Bello and Martin Sheen were amazing. Alan Tudyk was just right. He played the supportive,shocked brother/uncle. But he was there for his sister in just the way a good brother would be. Alan was the reason I went to see this movie and he was in it for quite a while.

Don't be put off by the subject matter. This movie is a great character study. It is well made and worth seeing. I'm glad I saw it. I'd go again.

An unsettling account of what might happen if your son became a mass murderer, it paints a picture of a family torn up over their child's actions and the new perception the rest of the world sees them in. I don't think I could cope with the endless barrage of Press at the door, nor the loss of friends or stares in the street from total strangers. Then there's the questions: Could I have done anything to stop it? Was his state of mind caused by my own inattention? Did I show him enough love?

This is an impossible situation for the parents to deal with, especially as they were on the edge of divorce even before these tragic events transpired. But all they have left is each other, and the film demonstrates their new found alliance against a hostile public. The performances couldn't be bettered, and the remorse you feel for this couple is palpable as everyone seems, in the absence of their dead offspring, to make them the scapegoats. It's not their fault. They loved their son. Sometimes, children just go bad. After all, I don't think Hitler's parents had any idea of the monster they were raising, did they?

At first, I hated the last scene. Too many unresolved plot threads, not enough resolution. But the more I think about it, it makes sense. Connect your own dots. Imagine your own follow-up. I would like to say they'll be fine, but I have my doubts... 7/10