(2007) Adjusting to his new identity and surroundings in Manchester, England, Jack Burridge (Andrew Garfield), shy and inarticulate, relies on father-figure Terry (Peter Mullan) in learning the ropes - "We have to keep looking forward, not back" - before going to work for the first time in his life.

He rents a room from a woman; drives a van with his partner Chris Kelly with whom he goes out drinking on a social occasion; and awkwardly makes acquaintance with Michelle (Katie Lyons) at work, whom the other employees call "the White Whale." Jack earns the nickname "Bruiser" for coming to Chris's aid with another bloke horning in on his girl; the two young men become local heroes for rescuing a little girl trapped in a car following an accident.

As sensitive Jack's relationship with Michelle blossoms into a real romance, he feels dishonest about not being able to reveal the secrets of his past, which Terry emphatically warns him to keep mute: "You grew. You changed."

Back into Terry's life returns his son Zeb after a long estrangement; however, the contrast between Zeb's failure to make anything of himself and Jack, Terry's "greatest accomplishment," develops into predictable, bitter resentment.

Based on Jonathan Trigell's novel, John Crowley directed this nuanced film of attempted redemption that seems fated for only one finale. It put me in mind of Peter Jackson's 2004 movie Heavenly Creatures.

"I and the public know/ What all schoolchildren learn,/ Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return." - W.H. Auden

Another boy at another time, teased by classmates for being "spastic," Eric Wilson, whose mother is dying of cancer and whose father demonstrates little affection toward him, becomes the only chum of Philip Craig, a psychopathic preadolescent filled with rage for the abuses visited upon him by an older brother; truant together, Philip teaches Eric his nasty, wicked ways of disregard for other life, including that of ten-year-old Angela Milton.

At their trial the prosecuting attorney speaks of the pair, Boy A and Boy B: "They are bad … evil … dangerous." Years later a tabloid with the headline "Evil Comes of Age" raises anew the case of the one-time children who killed a child. A muted past of murder mutates into a denial of atonement.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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