In the middle of a bleak Scottish nowhere, resourceful teenager Liam (Martin Compston) keeps hope of a better life for himself alive by ripping off his mother's brutish boyfriend and selling substances to his estate's many
addicts. Life is truly sweet for a while until he runs foul of the local heavy, who runs his own deals out of the back of a corporate health club.
Liam and best mate Pinball (William Ruane) are a likeable and, most importantly, believable pair of teens, lads who - even when they've been hauled into the health club - don't notice the arrival of the thugs because they're too busy gawping at women in bikinis. Compston, in particular, is a
good discovery in a latter-day Antoine Doinel role which allows him to play brawler, prankster and poet; when Liam gets into a car Pinball has stolen, the stereo is blaring out opera, and it's somehow significant the character
doesn't immediately retune it.
At heart, this is a very universal piece, just one of this country's ever-increasing number of stories about young people wanting to go their own way but instead forced into doing the dirty work of bad men. Yes, Sweet Sixteen proceeds with a certain inevitability, but Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty are true to every situation; and if it seems sometimes as if this director has been telling this story since the year dot, that doesn't mean he shouldn't tell it again, and again and again until somebody does something about it.
A Scottish teenager whose mother is in prison tries to raise the money for a home so that when she comes out she will be safe from the likes of her former boyfriend. An uncompromising and fiercely unsentimental slice of raw social realism that comes over like a Scottish Kes.
One of Loach’s best films, this uncompromising and fiercely unsentimental slice of raw social realism reads like a Scottish Kes. Instead of the symbolic kestrel of the... more >
One of Loach’s best films, this uncompromising and fiercely unsentimental slice of raw social realism reads like a Scottish Kes. Instead of the symbolic kestrel of the earlier film, here, 15 year-old Liam’s escape from reality is the dream of buying his junkie waster mother a caravan or flat (financed by drug dealing) to house her, his sister and baby Callum on mum’s release from prison. Doggedly and bravely enduring regular beatings in the pursuit of such an unrealistic and idealistic goal, Liam encounters his mum’s violent partner and the local drugs overlord en route to a predictably bleak ending that has more than a hint of a nod to Truffaut’s 400 Blows; alone on a beach, wiith nowhere to go but prison after stabbing mum’s lover, Liam appears caught between continuing to walk towards the waves or face the music. Superb, naturalistic performances from an unknown cast, gritty location and hand held shooting from cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and a palpable sense of desolation, poverty and desperate lives striving to escape their fate, Sweet Sixteen represents Loach’s finest work in years. < less
