This is a brutal, savage study of teenage crime, which by it’s very nature makes it an incredibly sad film. Johnny considers just bringing Zack back (Zack promises not to talk), but then he begins to wonder whether it would be safer just to get rid of the kid altogether. While Zack is enjoying his days as a kidnapped kid, his parents (Sharon Stone and David Thornton) are going nuts, and police are suddenly looking everywhere for Zack. Frankie (Justin Timberlake) is the guy in charge of taking care of Zack until Jake pays up, and they surprisingly begin to develop a pretty good friendship. The odd thing is, Zack likes being kidnapped… he’s a 15-year-old kid who’s just had a big fight with his parents, and finds the idea of hanging out with these bad boys pretty cool. This leads to a bitter fight between the two, and Johnny kidnaps Jake’s kid brother Zack (Anton Yelchin) as a hostage. Johnny is no mere showoff or small time crook, he’s wheeling and dealing big money with people, and guy named Jake who owes him (Ben Foster) isn’t paying. The leader of this teenage mafia is Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), who has presumably been elevated to such a position by his father (Bruce Willis), a man suspected of having some major mob ties. The characters at the center of this film are teenagers leading disturbingly violent lives, running their own little mob-like crime organization. Over the past couple of years, Cassavetes has had a legally questionable amount of access to information surrounding this story, and while I’m not sure about the ethics involved in the creation of this film (or all the specific details, for that matter), I do know that the end result is a powerful, unflinching, yet deeply flawed motion picture. Based on a true crime story from a few years ago, director Nick Cassavetes was given an unusual amount of actual case information from the prosecutors, who were hoping the movie would help bring about the capture of one of the suspects who was still at large. If any film this year should boast an interesting “making-of-the-movie” documentary, I suspect it will be this one.
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