And it is very difficult to watch a film that has been marketed in such a way and not wait patiently for the 'moral teaching' pay out. His father also, Marcus believes, a Good Samaritan, apparently died in car accident when he was five. Marcus now lives with his bartender grandmother, hangs with his small-time thief buddies and dreams of returning to New Mexico, where his family once lived, when his mum gets out of jail. And the story of his parent's history establishes in him some sense of morality, that he is from a lineage of people who know what's right and that he will eventually leave his current life of petty theft behind. Marcus is the moral leader of his gang, cautioning them against more serious crime, protecting the outcast from the group's bully - keeping the gang on the rails even though the rails are missing many sleepers.
Adult deception is the pressure system that brings the storm.
Relatives that wanted to ostensibly do their best for him by distorting his past and future have built his life's foundation on quicksand. He learns that his mother's crime was far more serious than he was led to believe and, as for the Good Samaritan story well not quite. Marcus does battle with Melena's abusive Dad and the other pressures that have begun to consume his life without the fictitious platform he had for living a 'virtuous' life. His responses and actions are now skewed and haphazard, at once kind-hearted and criminal. In the end Marcus has indeed forged his own path.