Miramax is positioning The Boys are Back as a potential Oscar vehicle for Clive Owen. My suggestion would be to go into it forgetting about the hope for high praise and you will find a mildly unique entry in the sobby broken family melodrama genre and a solid performance by Owen that doesn’t have the steam for a nomination, but it’s well worthy of praise.
The film itself does its best to buck the genre, setting a male character as the lead whereas we are most often watching a single woman bounce around her hectic life trying to take care of the kids and deal with the loss of a loved one. I also think the Australian setting will be enough to convince some stateside moviegoers they are watching something different than they are used to, when it really is anything but.
Owen stars as Joe Warr, a well-known Australian sports columnist who originally hails from Blighty, but since his divorce and subsequent marriage to an Aussie equestrian, he has moved down under and started a new life fresh with a new son (Nicholas McAnulty) to boot. Sadly his wife suddenly passes, leaving Joe and his son on their own. They fall into a certain carefree and unsanitary lifestyle when Joe’s son (George MacKay) from his first marriage pays a visit revealing the flaws in Joe’s parenting system, which is simply a matter of saying “yes” to most anything.
Romance ensues and certain career entanglements cause their own share of problems, which is to be expected in a film of this sort, and while it is cliche and predictable the story remains sweet and entirely tolerable.
The Boys are Back is definitely a step up from Scott Hicks’ last outing with No Reservations, but don’t expect it to follow in the footsteps of Shine, which he directed Geoffrey Rush to an Oscar in 1996 and earned himself a Best Director nomination among five others. So to say the film comes from good stock is a definite and is sure to be looked at as the helmer’s best narrative film since Shine, but I would never say it’s a theatrical must see. A rental should take care of this one, but you won’t be kicking yourself should you decide to buy a ticket.
