Mean Creek : [8/10] : USA 2004 : Jacob Aaron Estes : 87 mins

Time and again, debutant writer-directors all over the world are drawn to coming-of-age tales in which hormonal adolescents painfully make the transition to something approaching adulthood. Familiarity with this subject-matter often breeds audience contempt, but every now and again a film-maker comes along who injects this tired material with exciting new life. Jacob Aaron Estes is one such film-maker, and his Mean Creek is one of the year's best American movies.

It says much for Estes' skill that while Mean Creek is essentially a cross between Deliverance and River's Edge (with more than a touch of Stand By Me), the film does manage to establish a particular character, a vividly ominous intensity, all of its own. This is in no small part due to the outstanding work from Estes' young cast - there's no weak link in this six-strong ensemble: Rory Culkin as bullied high-schooler Sam; Josh Peck as overweight bully George; Carly Schroeder as Sam's prospective girlfriend Millie; Trevor Morgan as Sam's genial older brother Rocky; Scott Mechlowicz as Rocky's cocksure best-buddy Marty.

Mean Creek is the sort of film where, a few days after seeing it you have no difficulty in reeling off all the names of the main characters - even peripheral figures like Marty's asshole brother Kile (Brandon Williams) and Kile's doofus pal Jasper (Heath Lourwood) are written and played strongly enough to lodge in the memory. And this is also the kind of film where you immediately want to know the identities of all the actors involved - at the moment, Culkin (from You Can Count On Me, Signs, etc) is the only one who's at all well-known, but this will surely change, sooner rather than later.

It's invidious to single out particular performers from such a strong ensemble, but Morgan (as one of cinema's great cool, laid-back older brothers) projects the kind of easygoing charm associated with the likes of Jeff Bridges and Dennis Quaid in their younger years (Last Picture Show and Breaking Away, respectively, perhaps), Mechlowicz exudes the physicality and slowburning charisma of a born movie-star, and while Peck is less obviously cut out for future stardom, he's quite scarily convincing in the trickiest of the film's numerous tricky roles.

The less audiences know about the events in Mean Creek the better. Small town Oregon. Sam complains to Rocky that he's being bullied by George. Rocky and Marty concoct a revenge plan: Sam will pretend that his birthday is imminent. A boating trip on the river will be organised. George will be invited along - and will be humiliated in suitably extreme fashion once the group are out on the water. But things do not go according to plan...

Contributions behind the camera match those in front: Sharone Meir's cinematography provides yet another excellent advertisement for FotoKem film stock; Madeleine Gavin's editing is spot on; the score by 'tomandandy' (who also did The Mothman Prophecies and The Rules of Attraction) is effective and unobtrusive to the point that you often don't notice that it's there (the ultimate compliment?). And then of course there's the not-so-small matter of Estes' sensitive direction and his script, which is so good on the dynamics of the relationships between young people. Flawless? By no means - the on-screen killing of a snail being the most serious lapse. But Estes gets so much right that even Patricia Highsmith - who knew all about ominous tension, and doted on snails - would surely forgive him.

Neil Young
6th December, 2004
[seen 6th November : Ster Century, Leeds : public show : Leeds Film Festival]

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