I've raised my rating of this film from a 5 to a 6.
This is not the movie I was expecting, based on the few other reviews. I don't think it can be called a 'coming of age' movie, for one thing, as one reviewer put it. In a nutshell, two low-income-family kids are trying to get across L. A. to take part in a contest to win $1000. They leave in the evening so they can be sure to be at the contest when it starts the next morning. Their plans of course go awry and they end up mostly on foot or skateboard instead of being able to take the bus. We're with them all night as they do their best to make it to the contest (at the Staples Center), right up until the next morning when they arrive there.
First, the kid actors - they were good. I'd say the taller one ("Sage") was definitely the better actor of the two though the smaller one ("Edison") did an okay job. However I'm not going to give them raves as the best possible natural kid actors. (If you want to see a real kid who could act like a pro from day one, watch Brad Renfro in "The Client". Basically plucked out of a life in a trailer park at the age of 10, he was an absolute natural.) Anyhow, I think the two boys did okay considering the rather thin plot of this movie.
The cinematography was great - the film gave a real feel for being outside all night in downtown LA, and not in the best of neighborhoods either. However, in a movie like this, there are endless ways that the boys could have run into serious trouble or encountered some scary bad people, but they didn't really and I wished they had. Instead, most of the night was spent in random places doing random things. The boys were likeable enough that the viewer would really care what happened to them, but really, very little did.
The ending was rather puzzling. The movie ended in a way that didn't have much - if anything - to do with the rest of the story.
I'm giving this film 6 stars mostly because I like the feel of 'all night in L. A. that it provides. It does feel as if you're really there and I liked that. But if you want to watch a movie about kids who find themselves in some real situations and have to extricate themselves, watch Sky Kids. I think I gave that one an 8.
