However his opportunities for getting money to set them up is limited and he steals drugs from his step-father's stash and tries to deal them off as quick as possible to make the money he needs. With his mother due to be released in only a few months, Liam is determined to get her a new start along with him, his sister and her young son.

His step-father and grandfather having him smuggling drugs in to his mother's prison for her to sell on, while his activities with friend pinball can only politely be described as 'anti-social'. You don't care for him, like you cared for the boy in Kes.Liam is a teenager surrounded by crime and poverty all around him. Liam's heart is in the right place, but his methods are dubious. Chantelle is a rock, but her sympathy does not stretch to criminality. Even Liam's best friend (William Ruane) has a screw loose. Liam's relationship with his grandfather is as bad as that with his mother's lover.

For those unused to the West Coast dialect, it is not easy to follow. Laverty's script is so bare of sentiment, it hurts. The only way he can do this is by dealing drugs, which brings him into conflict with the real hard men who control distribution in the Port Glasgow district. Their mum is in jail and Liam's dream is to find enough money to buy a home for her when she comes out. He plays Liam, a 15-year-old scammer from a Greenock housing estate, who lives with his elder sister Chantelle (Annmarie Fulton) and her wee boy. In fact, Compston's performance dominates. Needless to say, they are utterly convincing. His lead actor is 17-year-old Martin Compston from the first team squad of Morton FC and Michelle Coulter - Martin's mother in the film - has worked in drug rehab for the past 10 years. He goes further in Sweet Sixteen and uses a predominately amateur cast. Now that the legendary Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski ( Dekalog, The Colours Trilogy) is dead, there are few exponents of the genre left, outside of Iran and China. Loach continues to follow in the Italian Neo Realist tradition ( Bicycle Thieves, Il Posto), which is beginning to look dated. The last time they were in Glasgow was for My Name Is Joe, with Peter Mullan, who won Best Actor at Cannes. Neither do their subjects any favours.Īfter a trip to La-La Land for Bread And Roses, the team of director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty is back on home ground. For a movie as uncompromising as this, the title has a pop tag to it, like Gillies MacKinnon's Small Faces.

Sweet sixteen movie review