Train Of Dreams

Using a predominantly nonprofessional cast, this outstanding documentarylike Canadian feature pulls no punches in its poignant depiction of youth gone bad. St. Amour plays a 17-year-old unemployed dropout who drifts into crime. As the movie opens he and a group of his street-tough friends mug a man in an alley. From this point on the film cuts back and forth between St. Amour's two-year detention in a correctional institution for young offenders and the actions that brought him there. Deserted by his father at an early age, he constantly battles with his mother, Santa Maria, who is incapable of handling him. She tries again and again to talk with him, but he is bey...