Beautiful Boy

Plot synopsis:
The film opens up with home videos of a husband and wife at the beach with their young son. A young man reads a short story about a boy and girl; saying that they didn't know it, but their lives would one day irrevocably change. Bill (Michael Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) are a married couple who are tightly wound and devoted to their work. Bill is a businessman, and Kate proofreads books for a living. The only thing keeping them together is their eighteen-year-old son Sam (Kyle Gallner), who is having trouble adjusting to college.
One morning, it's reported on the news that there has been a shooting spree at Sam's school. They are then visited by the police who inform them that Sam is not only dead, but that he was the gunman. Kate refuses to believe that their son would do something so horrible, and spends the night tidying up Sam's room as if nothing has happened. As the news media descends upon the couple, Bill and Kate decide to stay with Kate's brother Eric (Alan Tudyk) and his wife Trish (Moon Bloodgood). The next morning, Eric and Trish's son Dylan (Cody Wai-Ho Lee) turns on the television to see a video made by Sam about the impending massacre. Bill then decides to issue a public statement, saying that they are both deeply sorry over what has happened, and ask for their privacy as they endeavor to get their lives back on track. They have a small funeral with only family present.
Trish soon becomes agitated at Kate's nit-picking, and her attempts to mother Dylan, but Eric says that she has to be sensitive to their situation since Sam was her only child. They eventually leave, saying they are going to visit a friend, but check into a motel instead. The manager (Meat Loaf) not knowing who they are, makes a comment about Sam and his "monster family". Bill goes back to the house where he finds a teenage boy in Sam's room. They have a short scuffle where Bill cuts his hand, and the boy calls him a "psycho". He returns to the motel with their laptop, and finds a video from Sam. He and Kate view it together; Sam only says "mom and dad , I'm sorry ,please don't hate me"
Bill and Kate get into an argument about what could have caused Sam to kill all those innocent people. Bill lashes out at Kate for always critiquing every decision that Sam made, but she says that he was never there for them because he was always so busy working. Bill ends up saying that he wishes that Sam was never born, and Kate leaves.
She goes back to their house for the first time since the shooting, and looks through Sam's room. Bill meets with his boss Harry (Bruce French), who agrees that he can return to work next week. While grocery shopping, Kate runs into her young co-worker Cooper (Austin Nichols). They go back to the house, and she catches him looking through Sam's short stories. He says that he is writing a piece about the shooting, but that he wanted to portray Sam in a more human light by learning more about him. Bill finally returns to work, but feels alienated by the rest of the staff. Harry tells Bill to take more time off to see a therapist, so he quits.
Bill later visits the cemetery to find Sam's gravestone vandalized, with the word killer written on it. He breaks down both physically and emotionally as he tries to scrub the word off with his bandaged hand. Kate reads all of Sam's stories, and goes to Sam's gravestone as well. She gets a call from the motel manager about Bill, and finds him curled up in their old room. Kate embraces the emotionally distraught Bill, and takes him home.
Sam's voice is heard again as he ends his short story about the boy and girl. He says that no matter what they do, their lives will never be the same.

Tags: murder

Review:
Mom Kate (Maria Bello) is a typical concerned parent, wanting her child to do well; Dad Bill (Michael Sheen) asks is Sam needs any money and is doing well, and he hangs up.
The next morning, the terrible news: Sam has shot 18 students and teachers in his college before killing himself.The movie wisely shows us nothing of the massacre; its focus is on the aftermath.
Both Bill and Kate seem completely believable, and with the tragedies in places such as Columbine and Virginia Tech, they are characters who very much feel like they could be living next door to us right now.
Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) have been struggling with their marriage for years and have decided to give it one final go before actually calling it quits.
A raw, realistic, and heart-wrenching look into our society ensues...Man, do I love movies like this!
Beautiful Boy is not only a realistic tale about a crumbling marriage, but also a unique look at the family of a trouble college student who did the unthinkable.
In a time where school shootings are at an all time high, there comes a movie like this that dares to examine the subject matter from a unique perspective.
For years after mass shooting at various schools like Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, and of course the notorious Columbine, its about time some filmmaker dared to take a look into this subject and from the parents point of view.When we hear about school shootings, we always think about the crazy kid who shot up the school, but we never question for a second, what about the parents and how are they taking the news.
No one knows and this film doesn't necessarily answer that questions, but instead does show how hard the parents not only take the loss, but how it makes them feel as people who have to live with knowing what their child is a killer.While this film not only tackles that difficult subject matter; it also takes a brutally honest look at divorce and the basic struggles of every day life.
Beautiful Boy shows this with Bill and Kate throughout the film and how the couple goes through periods where their love is strong and where it is weak.
There is a huge fight scene near the end of the film in which Kate and Bill begin to violently argue about the relationship and whose fault it is that Sam turned out the way he did.
It is gripping, raw, and unforgettable.In order for this film to work as perfectly as it did, it clearly depended on Maria Bello and Michael Sheen to give realistic and believable performances.
Bello and Sheen are the ones knock this film out of the park and give some truly Oscar worthy performances.I applaud director/writer Shawn Ku as well as co-writer Michael Armbruster for creating a film that makes our society look at life, marriage, and adolescent violence from a whole new perspective.
With Wu's direction, Beautiful Boy feels makes the audience feel as though we are dealing with the events that are taking place on screen and as filmmakers that is a great accomplishment.At the end of the day, Beautiful Boy is definitely not the feel good film of the summer, but is probably one of the most powerful and realistic films that I have seen in many years.
Beautiful Boy will more than likely be one of those films that around December of this year that will make it's way onto my " best of" list for the year..
Michael Sheen and Maria Bello play parents who lose their college-age son, but worse is their son died after shooting up his school.
So along with them having to grieve the loss of their boy, they have to suffer the scrutiny of the media attacking their son and them publicly, along with fighting themselves in trying to figure out what led to this awful thing happening.
They fight with whether they're responsible, whether they should take time to grieve or try to go back into things and as many other things as you can think of in this struggle for normalcy in understanding when everything else is fighting against them.Of course anything dealing with themes like this gives way to a lot of opportunity for melodrama.
These characters suffer in real ways and even though the film initially splits the two into stereotypes, Bello having the hysterical screams and disbelief and Sheen with the stunned silence, as it progresses they both go through phases of devastation, denial and just a need to understand and get past it.
They bring a lot of power to their roles and it can definitely hit very hard at times.Both Sheen and Bello have always been fine actors who rarely get the chance to demonstrate their immense talents.
Shawn Ku's Beautiful Boy examines the aftermath of a young man, Sammy, that commits a mass shooting at his school and ultimately takes his own life.
Bill (Michael Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) are your average married couple.
As a small and obviously personal film, Michael Sheen and Maria Bello deliver clear and cut, two of the most worthy performances of award's recognition this year.
The decision to use distant camera shots that are then zoomed in provides a layer between the characters and the audience that works in this film as we are invading the private lives during their most difficult times.The film follows the emotional journey of Bill (Michael Sheen) and wife Kate (Maria Bello) who are coping with the loss of their son from a college shooting incident.
However, the emotions of the families are completely foreign.The supporting roles are quietly powerful with Alan Tudyk (mostly known for his role of Steve the Pirate in "Dodgeball") as the brother of Kate, who defends his sister to his own wife when she is acting like "supermom" to her nephew.
But one too many things go wrong with this film that are results of maybe the film's own personal setbacks, and the screenplay's too.Bill (Sheen) and Kate (Bello) are a middle-class couple with a son in his Freshman year of College.
Bill and Kate are shocked and in denial when they get the news the next day that their son walked into his morning class, with a handgun, and opened fire on his teacher and classmates.Now is the part we rarely think about when it comes to tragedies like school shootings - the aftermath for the shooter's parents.
They are unfairly blamed, stamped with the seal of "bad parents," and are now trying to save their already dying marriage by holding onto the only one who knows their pain.It's heartbreaking to think about both of the affected sides in an incident like this.
It's hard on everyone.Michael Sheen and Maria Bello create pretty well acted chemistry, but ultimately, the film is its own worst enemy.
The film is free from waterworks, and this is coming from a guy who cries during My Girl, Stand By Me, and Toy Story 3.It might seem like I'm being way too critical, but once you get past those minor setbacks, Beautiful Boy truly is a pretty good film.
We don't really think about the parents of the murderer, or how they are affected.One sub-plot I wish the film would've explored was maybe having one of the neighbor's kids being killed and then the aftermath of between the couple of the killer and the couple of the victim.
I feel that that would've made a great little addition to a film already very limited.Beautiful Boy is a good first effort for a plot like this, and hopefully, more films will explore this topic with a heftier budget and further pursuing of the story would occur.
There is a film coming out pretty soon called We Need to Talk About Kevin, and from reading the plot and details of it, it seems Beautiful Boy wanted to be something just like that.
It will most likely suffer by comparison when that comes out, when really, its setbacks are some that you just can't really overcome.Starring: Michael Sheen, Maria Bello, and Kyle Gallner.
Bill (Micheal Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) are sharing a marriage that has no love.
Two detectives walk up to Bills front door, Kate knew that Sammy is dead even before a word is said; however what she didn't know is that her son is the killer and he took his own life as well after shooting down the other students.
Shawn Ku has all the right moves with the camera angles, the close up shots, the abrupt silence to build interest, but his efforts would have gone a longer way if the emotional factor which is in my case the most pre-dominant of all factors is present.Mass high school and college massacres always have been a thriving issue in some countries.
Title: Beautiful Boy Directed by: Shawn Ku Starring: Michael Sheen and Maria Bello Rated: R for some Language and a scene of sexuality Rated: 04/10.
It speaks loudly to contemporary marriages and families torn asunder by lack of communication in a time of sheltered or imposed privacy of cellphones, blogging, computers that prevent face to face communications at critical times.Bill (Michael Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) are living a stalemate of a marriage on the brink of ending: Kate is a proofreader for writers (currently for Cooper played with great sincerity by Austin Nichols) while Bill immerses himself in his business life.
Instead of a predictable happy ending the audience is left in the throes of the mending process - a writer/director choice that makes the film far more dramatic than most.Sheen and Bello give razor sharp portrayals of these two devastated, questioning people.
A very powerful and moving movie dealing with parents of a student who goes on a shooting spree and kills 17.
This movie did tackle the rarely seen subject of what the parents of someone who does that goes through and made you take a second thought at how you may have felt after the Columbine or Virgina Tech families.
This is another movie about a couple whom has lost a child except the difference is it is told from the perspective of parents whose child killed other students before committing suicide.The movie starts out with the couple, Kate and Bill, planning a vacation with their son.
It tells the story about business man Bill Carroll and proof-reader Kate Caroll, a conflicted married couple who is on the verge of separating when they learn that their 18-year-old son Sam has shoot numerous students at his university, including himself.
To get away from the media Bill and Kate move in with Kate's brother Eric and his wife Trish, but as time goes by they begin to question themselves as parents and is tormented by questions of why and how their son could have ended up doing what he did and if they could have done anything to prevent it.Finely and acutely directed by American filmmaker Shawn Ku, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from the two main character's point of view, draws a compassionate and intimate portrayal of a married couple's struggle to recuperate and find their way back to each other after being left in shock and devastation by their young son.
While notable for it's naturalistic milieu depictions, low-keyed production design by Hungarian production designer and art director Gabor Norman and realism, this dialog-driven indie and psychological drama depicts two dense and interrelated studies of character and contains a good score by Canadian composer Trevor Morris.This at times heartrending, at times romantic, at times humorous and at times afflicting love-story which examines themes like grief, guilt, marriage and love, is impelled and reinforced by it's subtle character development and the heartfelt and empathic acting performances by English actor Michael Sheen and American actress and singer Maria Bello.
The shooting should have happened in the middle of the movie- instead, it happens right away before you get to know the characters or feel anything for them-there's no contrast to the movie-the acting is not the best either--or the directing.
It's not about the violence, but about the nightmare it is to be the parents of what has been a nice boy, doing atrocities.This film is about coping, about dealing with something that can't be undone, about getting through, about reconciliation, about trying to move on.
It's a love story, and an unusual one, about surviving the impossible.Maria Bello and Michael Sheen does another great acting job here.
In a way this film both gives us the feeling, and an impression of there still being hope even after an unspeakable tragedy like this.Meat Loaf is turning up in a y role as a motel clerk..
Its striking realism is both a gift and a curse: seeing its protagonists in their naturally empty and shell-shocked state for much of the film doesn't make for entertaining viewing - nonetheless its emotional scenes pack such a weighty punch, heightened by Sheen and Bello's terrific performances, you can truly feel their agony.While the fallout from the unconscionable number of tragedies that inspired this film tends to focus mainly on the perpetrator, then on the victims and their families, "Beautiful Boy" wisely forces its audience to think about the side of the story that is rarely heard..
More focused on their own troubles, the couple must deal with the aftermath that ensues after their son decides to kill himself and others in a college mass shooting incident.
Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) are a struggling couple who are sleeping in separate rooms.
The onslaught of media forces them to stay with her brother Eric (Alan Tudyk) and his wife Trish (Moon Bloodgood).Bello and Sheen are using all their acting skills to drive this movie.
Going beyond blame and fear that is conventional in the media, the movie takes the perspective of the child's parents, who are in shock and grief, and simply can't understand what went wrong, with such a "normal" child.
There are moments in the film where the estranged couple begin to talk about how they feel in general and show a care for the other, moments of letting go of the pain and embracing intimacy, and moments where they hit rock bottom and attack each other for their personal suffering and the suffering of their dead child, rather than bear any responsibility, even if just by communication and intimacy and love.
I'd love to see someone write a movie on this subject again, only this time do it the right way..
there also should of been more flashbacks to when the boy was much younger...other than the very first scene, this movie is more about the parents grieving than it is the actually shooting, which i thought was terrible in terms of the plot.
The son, played by Kyle Gallner, is mesmerizing in his few moments of screen time, and I feel that the movie would have been much stronger if we were permitted to see a little more of his college environment and the days leading up to the shooting.However, I recognize that is the very point of the movie - - we want to understand how people make these terrible decisions, but we never can see enough evidence because ultimately there is nothing that can justify such evil.
Husband Bill (Michael Sheen) and wife Kate (Maria Bello) and their son who is in his first year of college.
Tudyk's torn love and Bloodgood's icy stare easily matched Sheen and Bello's ceaseless emotional range.When giving us supporting characters whose roles in the couple's partnership seemed obvious, both the supportive neighbour and the young, handsome writer became more than their cliché counterparts would suggest, and added substantial interest to the already engaging dynamics of all the relationships.The audience is given plenty of time to cry.
They brought real pause for thought about the fear and grief that parents go through when their child is off at university and sounds depressed and might not be adjusting all that well."Beautiful Boy" ends as it began—with people.
A saving grace of this film was the magnificent performances of Maria Bello and Michael Sheen in the title roles, a couple who are totally devastated when their beloved son takes his own life at his college after committing mass murder.While truly a depressing film, it examines the effects of this tragedy on the parents.
The performances by Michael Sheen and Maria Bello are moving.
I will be honest, I saw this film listed on the movie channels and looked at the information and upon seeing it had Maria Bello and Michael Sheen in it, I wanted to watch it.
The fact it was about parents dealing with the fallout of their sons college shooting pulled me in all the more.Having just watched it, I wanted to have a look what others made of it.
For Beautiful Boy, you don't have the son available to speak about his actions like the other film, you only get a couple of tiny snippets, the film doesn't focus on him or the shooting at the same time that it is entirely focused on them, but via the parents' reaction.I think this film stands out because there is no way to determine any wrong doing, and it feels that there really isn't any.
They have the double whammy of not only dealing with their child's death, but the fact that he had it in him to kill so many people.I don't think that Maria Bello and Michael Sheen deliver a well acted chemistry, I think they deliver a superb estranged numbness that would be evident in parents like them.
As well as Maria Bello, and Kyle Gallner, both recognizable, and well-known faces in the film industry, who both also did a fantastic job.Centering around a family, who've lost touch, Beautiful Boy hits incredibly close to home for late-teen-to-mid-twenties males, as well as parents.