Sweet Sixteen

Released 2002
Stars Martin Compston, Annmarie Fulton, William Ruane, Michelle Coulter, Gary McCormack
Directed by Ken Loach

"Sweet Sixteen" is set in Scotland and acted in a local accent so tricky it needs to be subtitled. Yet it could take place in any American city, in this time of heartless cuts in social services and the abandonment of the poor. I saw the movie at about the same time our lawmakers eliminated the pitiful $400 per child tax credit, while transferring billions from the working class to the richest 1 percent. Such shameless greed makes me angry, and a movie like "Sweet Sixteen" provides a social context for my feelings, showing a decent kid with no job prospects and no opportunities, in a world where only crime offers a paying occupation.

The director of "Sweet Sixteen," Ken Loach, is political to the soles of his shoes, and his films are often about the difficulties of finding dignity as a working person. The movie's hero is a 15-year-old named Liam (Martin Compston) who has already been enlisted into crime by his grandfather and his mother's boyfriend. We see the three men during a visit to his mother in prison, where Liam is to smuggle drugs to her with a kiss. He refuses: "You took the rap once for that bastard." But the mother is the emotional and physical captive of her boyfriend, and goes along with his rules and brutality.

Summary by Roger Ebert

This is a grim picture of life, but it's not real depressing. On the other hand, it's certainly not uplifting. It just matter of factly follows this ambitious kid along his path to becoming a career criminal and having his heart broken. He's not necessarily a bad kid, but he lives in an environment that pushes him along this path. The lesson he learns is he's not the only one who allows himself to be a victim of his environment, because his mother and friends do the same. The performances in this movie are phenomenal. None of these people seem like they're acting; they inhabit these roles in a way that we rarely see in the movies. --Bill Alward, January 10, 2004