Writer-director-producer Brad Gann's tale of growing up in blue-collar South Boston features a strong central performance, but it doesn't miss a cliche of hardscrabble adolescence.
Fifteen-year-old Catholic schoolboy Cole McKay (Michael Angarano) is trapped in an insular neighborhood where family and ethnic ties are everything. His father (Brendan Gleeson) is a hard, unemployed drunk and his mother, pious social worker Margaret (Melissa Leo), is rigid, embittered and dedicated to maintaining the fiction that the McKays are a close-knit, happy, God-fearing family, despite her rebellious daughter's (Emily VanCamp) out-of-wedlock pregnancy and the fact that her...
Released:
2007
Rated:
R
Length:
95 mins