Warning: Contains Spoilers!
I bought this film because I'm a big fan of Paul Sorvino and Andrew Divoff who are both in this movie and their performances didn't disappoint me, but neither did the story line. No, this movie wasn't perfect, like most others I too was annoyed at the arbitrary historical footage in between the scenes but for me that didn't take away from the story.
It's a heartbreaking tale of poverty, shattered dreams, domestic violence and child abuse that needs to be told. No matter how many films we make about this, it's something very real and devastating that is unfortunately too common. This movie really hit home for me because I saw so many traces of my own childhood in there; growing up in a single-parent household in a foreign place with bad guys who came and went. Much like Daanyik's, my cries fell on deaf ears too.
The ending of the movie is really what got me on the edge of my seat. I was literally clawing at my living room chair when Tolik (played by Andrew Divoff) was at Meela's (played by Angela Gots) door threatening to kill both her and little Daanyik and she actually opened it! I swore he was going to kill both of them but in a twist that I really wasn't expecting, it's little Daanyik who ends up stabbing Tolik to death. It was an emotionally intense ending to an emotionally intense film, especially for someone who lived through something similar (minus the murder).
I do hope that future viewers will stop being childish as to the production of this film (who also happened to be based on a true story of the writer's life) and actually look to the story told here and take an important lesson from it.
I bought this film because I'm a big fan of Paul Sorvino and Andrew Divoff who are both in this movie and their performances didn't disappoint me, but neither did the story line. No, this movie wasn't perfect, like most others I too was annoyed at the arbitrary historical footage in between the scenes but for me that didn't take away from the story.
It's a heartbreaking tale of poverty, shattered dreams, domestic violence and child abuse that needs to be told. No matter how many films we make about this, it's something very real and devastating that is unfortunately too common. This movie really hit home for me because I saw so many traces of my own childhood in there; growing up in a single-parent household in a foreign place with bad guys who came and went. Much like Daanyik's, my cries fell on deaf ears too.
The ending of the movie is really what got me on the edge of my seat. I was literally clawing at my living room chair when Tolik (played by Andrew Divoff) was at Meela's (played by Angela Gots) door threatening to kill both her and little Daanyik and she actually opened it! I swore he was going to kill both of them but in a twist that I really wasn't expecting, it's little Daanyik who ends up stabbing Tolik to death. It was an emotionally intense ending to an emotionally intense film, especially for someone who lived through something similar (minus the murder).
I do hope that future viewers will stop being childish as to the production of this film (who also happened to be based on a true story of the writer's life) and actually look to the story told here and take an important lesson from it.