Rate This Movie
Boy A (2008)
88 %
Reviews Counted: 40 Fresh: 35 Rotten:5 Average Rating: 7.3/10
Consensus:
Small in scale but large in impact, Boy A's career making performances (particularly that by star Andrew Garfield) and carefully crafted characters defy judgment and aggressively provoke debate.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Theatrical Release: Jul 23, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Bright futures are undercut by dark pasts in BOY A, a quiet, ruminative tale about a violent act committed by a man in his tormented youth, and his haunting inability to find a way to have a peaceful adulthood years later. Fresh out of a 14-year prison sentence, 24-year-old Jack (Andrew... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Peter Mullan, Shaun Evans, Siobhan Finneran, Katie Lyons
Director: John Crowley
Screenwriter: Mark O'Rowe
Producer: Nick Marston, Tally Garner, Lynn Horsford
Composer: Paddy Cunneen
Screenwriter: Mark O'Rowe
Producer: Nick Marston, Tally Garner, Lynn Horsford
Composer: Paddy Cunneen
Pre-order it on DVD
Reviews
The movie is taut with suspense but culminates in wise resignation as the hero comes to understand he's running from a part of himself.
Comment
08/12/08
Top Critic
Crowley gets a remarkable performance from Andrew Garfield: his Jack is a person who carries guilt with him even when he is trying to override it.
08/11/08
Top Critic
Boy A is one of those rare movies that takes the idea of rehabilitation seriously. In the end, it may present a worst-case scenario, but it does so with unusual depth and conviction.
08/08/08
In tandem, the director and screenwriter build up a palpable suspense. Boy A will rivet you while raising issues about forgiveness and just who deserves it.
08/08/08
Top Critic
Along with Garfield and the splendid Scottish actor Mullan, Crowley brings great tact to this bruising saga of atonement and moral regeneration. Though a bad seed can bring forth good fruit, will others want to pick it?
08/08/08
Top Critic
There are some gaps in the movie's reality, and some O. Henry-like contrivances, but the masterful trick Boy A plays on viewers is to get them to care before giving them reasons not to.
08/08/08
Top Critic
We're introduced to more string-pulling symbolism than a movie this inherently sad ever needs. It's too much.
08/08/08
Top Critic
Mullen and Garfield fit well together -- both have faces you like on first sight, both have charm, both have warmth.
08/08/08
Top Critic
... [Peter] Mullan's compassion and paternal protectiveness and [Andrew] Garfield's buoyant performance... bring a warmth to the otherwise grim drama.
08/07/08
Although the screenplay tips our sympathies wholly in the young man's direction, it's cleverly structured to reveal the particulars of the long-ago crime, and what led up to it, in flashback.
08/07/08
Top Critic
Emotionally searing....Thanks largely to Garfield's heartfelt performance, Boy A becomes a powerful, poignant story of the difficulty of forgiveness.
08/07/08
The film is well balanced in its storytelling and fills in all the details of the [heinous] crime and its aftermath years later.
08/05/08
...a sad story that supports the idea of child killers as often victims themselves, the far less passionately defended point of view.
08/05/08
Taken as the meditation on the past that it is, Boy A is a moving look at the best and worst of how humans can treat one another.
07/30/08
Top Critic
A small, huge film about the harsh realities of rehabilitation, and the shimmering possibility of redemption.
07/25/08
Top Critic
If Hitchcock had done a coming-of-age drama, it might have resembled this haunting, nervous, sad movie.
07/25/08
Top Critic Top Critic
Sensitive portrait of a young man's efforts to reintegrate into society after committing a horrible crime as a child.
07/25/08
Related Forums
(Tribeca/2008 USA release)-John Crowley's BOY A opens in NYC & LA this week!!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
(Tribeca/2008 USA release)-John Crowley's BOY A opens in NYC & LA this week!!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
(Tribeca/2008 USA release)-John Crowley's BOY A opens in NYC & LA this week!!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
(Tribeca/2008 USA release)-John Crowley's BOY A opens in NYC & LA this week!!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
by: REEL_REVIEWER 8/19
Best film of 08'
by: Bruce Campbell 7/22
by: Bruce Campbell 7/22
Pictures
Trailers & Clips
News
Critics Consensus: File The X-Files Under "Disappointing"
posted by Tim Ryan July 24, 2008
This week at the movies, we learn that the truth is out there (The X-Files: I Want to Believe, starring David Duchovny and...
posted by Tim Ryan July 24, 2008
This week at the movies, we learn that the truth is out there (The X-Files: I Want to Believe, starring David Duchovny and...
IGN RSS Feeds