| This Boy's Life | | Cast : | Robert De Niro, Ellen Barkin, Leonardo DiCaprio | | Director : | Michael Caton-Jones | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | April 09, 1993 | | DVD Released Date : | September 07, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | February 19, 2005 | | Summary | This Boy's Life | Content
 | This movie was very good, De Niro did was brilliant as usual, and DiCaprio gave a good performance also. The movie is sort of funny in a way too, I mean the fight scene when he fought the (...) guy, the movie is not all up tight and dramafied, which is all the reason why it is more enjoyable. Check it out if you are a DiCaprio or a De Niro fan. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 13, 2004 | | Summary | Boys Will Be Boys | Content
| This Boy's Life is based on author Tobias Wolff's highly touted autobiography about his troubled youth. While I never read the book, the film offers up one of actor Leonardo DiCaprio's most intense performances, save except for his turn in two other biopics, The Basketball Diaries and The Aviator. It also calls for acting giant Robert De Niro to take a relentless and dark turn as a sadistic stepfather.
After her divorce, Caroline Wolff (Ellen Barkin) is left with no job prospects, and decides to take her young son Toby (DiCaprio) on a carefree journey across America. They stop for a while in a few small towns, where Caroline gets involved with different men, but they always end up back on the road, running -- until Caroline meets Dwight Hansen (De Niro), a military man whom she believes will bring stability to their lives and help raise Toby. But things soon spiral out of control, as Dwight proves to be quite the opposite, a cruel disciplinarian dictator, determined to enforce a rigid set of rules on Toby. When the boy finally cannot take it anymore, he looks for any way out of his circumstances, even if it means taking on Dwight himself.
Directed by Michael Canton-Jones puts his cast through their paces as they deal with some pretty tough material. The depiction of what what Wolfe and his mother had to go through was indeed a nightmare. De Niro plays an absolute piece of scum (to put it as nicely as I can) in the movie and DiCaprio proves he can go toe to toe with both Barkin and De Niro. Now, I am by no means a fan of Leo's per se` but for someone at the start of his movie career--that's quite a feat, especially when you see just where the narrative goes. The film also features a solid role for acting stalwart Chris Cooper as Roy and eagle-eyed viewers will also spot a very young Eliza Dushku (Faith on the television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer) as Pearl.
The DVD doesn't have much in the way of bonus material. The theatrical trailer and a few notes on the cast/director as well as the writer is all you get on the disc. A commentary from Canton-Jones would have been nice. I bet the film has an interesting backstory.
By all means still see This Boy's Life for some fine performances. It will be worth it. |
| Rating | | | Date | October 26, 2004 | | Summary | Stark but hopeful | Content
| I just happened to catch this film on HBO one evening and was stunned at how good it turned out to be. While I appreciate some of the remarks of earlier reviewers, I don't believe that films and books should be evaluated against the same criteria, so I am more forgiving of the bedroom scene in the film. For me, the bedroom scene between Dwight and Toby's mother serves a purpose -- to show just how much of a crude, repressed guy Dwight really is, not to mention calculating, since his bedroom behavior is about 180 degrees away from the uber-gentleman he purported to be when he was courting the mother.
In any case, the main interest of the film for me lies in the role of Toby as played by DiCaprio. I was never much impressed with him in Titantic and his other hits. He was adequate, but in my view much overrated. Here, however, his talent is much clearer to me, especially in the way he convinces me to believe that Toby is actually a good person, despite his behavior.
But the main strength of the film is Tobias Wolff's story line. For much of the film, there is an inexorable feeling of Toby marching to his ultimate doom, not unlike one of those novels of the Victorians like Thomas Hardy. There is a sense that, no matter what he ever does, Toby is destined to become a desperate adult, trapped in Concrete and probably slowly drinking himself to death after his shift is over at the local factory. The fact that Toby gets himself out of Concrete and away from his step-father, not to mention also saves his mother, is deeply hopeful. Even though the notes at the end of the film say that he was eventually expelled from the Hill School, it's clear that he went on to make something quite impressive of himself, and that he did so in spite of all of the nasty stuff that went on during his formative years.
This makes me want to recommend the film to all teens, especially boys, who feel helpless and trapped right now, as well as to the adults who care for them. Wolff's story says that no matter how difficult our circumstances, and no matter how many blunders our caregivers make, each individual still has the opportunity to shape his/her life. We are not destined for anything that we don't want for ourselves, provided we are willing to push back and fight for ourselves.
Finally, as a foster parent I found this film hopeful because it shows me that well-meaning adults like Toby's mother (and me!) may make mistakes, but that a child's failure is not completely determined by our decisions. And that's a degree of comfort for those of us who are trying hard and worry about whether we're doing the right thing.
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| Rating | | | Date | January 21, 2004 | | Summary | Do Yourself A Favor: Read the Book. | Content
| This is one of those cases where the book is WAY better than the movie. The graphic gratuitous sex scenes are not in the book, and as Tobias Wolff himself has wondered, since signing over the rights, and I'm paraphrasing, "This is a story which is seen through a kid's eyes; How would the kid have known what was going on inside his Mother's bedroom?" It looks like the movie makers just wanted to throw in some gratuitous T & A garbage.
Another thing: in the book, Dwight, the father, is abusive, yes; however, he is also so pitiful and bumpkinesque that he evokes as much laughter as he does villification. In the movie, Dwight is a 2-dimension stereotypical alcoholic abuser and that's all.
Read the book. |
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