***½/****
starring Martin Compston, William Ruane, Annmarie Fulton, Michelle Abercromby
screenplay by Paul Laverty
directed by Ken Loach
by Walter Chaw Ken Loach returns to his blue-collar roots with the incendiary Sweet Sixteen, a fabulous evocation of place and the plight of the lower class in the mean streets of Glasgow. Supremely well-acted and marked by Loach's gift for an effortless transparency in setting and the performances he coaxes from inexperienced actors, the picture follows young Liam (Martin Compston) on the eve of his sixteenth birthday as he shuck-and-jives his way towards a better life for him and his soon-to-be-ex convict mother, Jean (Michelle Coulter). At first hustling stolen cigarettes with his best friend Pinball (William Ruane), Liam decides to steal heroin from his mom's no-good boyfriend Stan (Gary McCormack) to sell on the streets, putting him in the hot seat with the local cosa nostra. With a home-invasion reminiscent of the one in John Boorman's The General (the differences between the two illustrate an interesting division between the directors' styles and philosophies: the one grimy, the other lyrical), Sweet Sixteen is ever in danger of succumbing to the sickly irony of its title, but Loach invests a level of exhilaration into his wayward youths that honours the halcyon highs of childhood even in the midst of privation and decay. With frequent screenplay collaborator Paul Laverty and a cast of newcomers, Loach's Sweet Sixteen would be perfect but for a final few minutes that succumb to the kind of tidiness the rest of the film ably avoids.
