This Boy's Life Details

Anyone who doubts Leonardo DiCaprio's acting abilities should check out this moving coming-of-age drama. In this troubling tale set in Seattle in the 1950s, DiCaprio plays the rebellious teenage son of working mum Ellen Barkin, who finds himself locked in a battle of wills with bullying stepfather Robert De Niro. After the lightweight antics of his first American movie, Doc Hollywood, British director Michael Caton-Jones relishes the opportunity to try out meatier material and makes the most of Robert Getchell's largely unsentimental adaptation of Tobias Wolff's acclaimed autobiography. Although Caton-Jones doesn't flinch from showing the brutality of the relationship between DiCaprio, De Niro and Barkin, he still finds room for some quirky slices of humour and neatly avoids the overwrought melodrama lurking within the material. De Niro is as impressive as usual, succeeding in being both frighteningly monstrous and faintly absurd. Barkin is equally good, but this is DiCaprio's show: mature beyond his years, he is movingly believable as the confused, abused teen.

"...[DiCaprio fights De Niro] to an honorable draw, something few performers, and no other teenager, could do..." -- Rating: A