This story tells about an obscurity that seems closer to the reality of Brandon. Brandon is a 15-year-old teenager whose goal and ambition lie in getting a pair of fresh sports shoes that he can buy. Brandon believes that these shoes will help him escape the fact that he is poor and brings him the opposite sex. When Brandon got the pottery, he became a target after Fabo immediately kidnapped her. Brandon tries to recover those shoes again.
Still, what Tipping masters perfectly in the film is the constant ebb and flow of humor, and darkness, that runs through the narrative that is inner city boyhood.
The motif of a faceless, imaginary spaceman following the boy around is overly precious, but what does work is Tipping's focus on sensitive boys hardening in reaction to their father figures (or lack thereof).
The characters have enough dimension to avoid appearing to be symbols of a social tragedy, and the movie's relative gentleness makes the harsher realities of Brandon's world all the more distressing.
A dangerous quest for a stolen pair of shoes becomes an odyssey through ravaged California minority neighborhoods where drugs are omnipresent and violence is never far away. It is a tale of lost innocence, absent fathers and rites of passage.
Tipping's admittedly artful style is relatively ambiguous, focusing mostly on cheap visceral thrills, to the point where it's impossible to glean what he thinks about the depths to which Brandon will go.
It's about manhood, growing up in the hood, and the inner struggles you don't see played out on the news... It's not a perfect movie by any means, but I'm interested to see what Tipping does next.
Tipping, who also co-wrote the polished script, captures this unique mix of adolescent anxiety, urban decay and societal friction in a remarkably confident fashion ...
