The Boys Are Back
Running time 104 minutes
Written by Allan Cubitt
Directed by Scott Hicks
Starring Clive Owen, Laura Fraser, Nicholas McAnulty, George Mackay
Clive Owen has either a bad agent or a bad eye. Considering his talent and charisma, it’s amazing how many really terrible movies he makes. (The male Julianne Moore?) Submerged in a predictable rash of indistinguishable action flicks and violent crypto thrillers, his career has hit so many snags that it’s hard to remain loyal. But his luck could change with The Boys Are Back, fresh from its premiere at last week’s Toronto International Film Festival and a welcome reminder that the guy can act.
The Boys Are Back, a poignant family drama from Australian director Scott Hicks (Shine), is about the child-rearing challenges faced by a rakish British sportswriter named Joe Warr, who, after a bad first marriage back in England, has settled in the land of Oz and found marital bliss and fatherhood with the wife and soul mate of his dreams. After the cruel fate of her death from cancer, he’s forced to come to grips with the responsibility of raising his 7-year-old son, Artie (Nicholas McAnulty), taking a clumsy stab at solo parenting in a rambling hillside farmhouse in the rustic wine country near Adelaide. Dealing with pain, loss, anger and a career that takes him away from home a lot, Joe is aided to a point by his mother-in-law, until he realizes she is using her grandson to keep the memory of her own daughter alive. Joe plows on—flawed, making bad choices and doing crazy, dangerous things—but he’s on the verge of a father-son breakthrough with the unhappy, confused child. Then, suddenly, his 14-year-old son, Harry (George MacKay)—a troubled teenager from the first marriage with low self-esteem and raging with abandonment anxiety—arrives, and the widower who is still a dedicated, self-centered bachelor at heart finds himself saddled with two boys to nurture and rear instead of one. The film chronicles not only the trauma of a single father doing double duty, but the more complex mood shifts of the children searching for an emotional center. The ways remorse grows into compassion and strength—and the ways Dad learns to parent himself in the process, while building the broken pieces into a family—are explored with intelligence, humor and a refreshing absence of sentimentality. Scenes of Mr. Owen doing the cooking, scrubbing, washing and shopping for groceries while meeting deadlines and making room for quality time are funny enough to make you ache. Based on the best-selling memoir by British sports journalist Simon Carr, the movie is faithful to the writer’s allergy to tears and self-pity, and Mr. Owen plays all the colors and emotions of the parenting dilemma with a probing wit and a sense of humanity that are thrilling to watch. Roguish yet vulnerable, he gives a performance that is both rough-hewn and gently nuanced. Scott Hicks, returning to Australia for the first time since Shine, captures the ochre and burnt sienna landscape of the region brilliantly, and the great cinematographer Greig Fraser brings the rolling hills and sweeping plains to life with a haunting splendor.
I don’t know what the commercial prospects are for The Boys Are Back, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. A lot of movies have shown how women survive a devastating loss to face the struggles of single parenting. This is one of the rare ones about the same demands from a man’s point of view. It might not be a great movie, but it’s nice to see Clive Owen in a serious role for a change, interacting with children, with something in his arms besides a machine gun.
