Mean Creek (2004)

In the past couple months I have been attempting to make a list of the 100 best films of the decade, from 2000 to 2009. I realize the futility and insanity of such a list, but I like to make lists, and I have seen a lot of good movies in the past ten years, so I am going to try to rank my 100 favorites. It might be impossible.

Anyway, I have been going back and watching some films I liked but haven't seen in a while, to review my initial impressions of these films. Mean Creek is one such film. I saw it when it was released on DVD in 2004, and I remember liking it very much. So I watched it last night, to see if that impression remains. It does.

Mean Creek is a disturbing, meditative story about kids and the choices they make. Aspects of it will be all too familiar to any male who has ever been through the impossible experience of growing up around other kids. It was written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes and stars Rory Culkin, younger brother to Macaulay and Kieran Culkin. From what I can tell from this film, Rory is better than both his brothers.

The film concerns a boy around the age of thirteen, Sam (Culkin), and a bully, George (Josh Peck), who beats him up at school. Sam's older brother Rocky (Trevor Morgan) finds out about it and they devise a plan to get back at George, to "hurt him without really hurting him." Rocky gets his friends to join in on the prank, which ends up taking the shape of a canoe trip, where the prank will take place.

I don't want to give away any more of the plot, but I do want to desribe the other characters, because they are all of a particular importance. One of Rocky's friends is Marty (Scott Meclowicz), an angry recent high school graduate whose father has committed suicide. Marty gets picked on by his older brother. Two other kids who come along on the boat trip are Clyde (Ryan Kelley), Rocky's more soft-spoken friend, and Millie (Carly Schroeder), a pretty girl in Sam's class. Millie and Sam obviously have a bit of a thing for each other.

I won't tell you specifically what happens on the canoe trip, but I will say that it takes a good look at the nature of and reasoning for George's bullying. We see his loneliness, and we also see the troubles of the other characters, and the wrong ways in which they deal with these problems.

Mean Creek is an eye-opening film about growing up male and the cowardice toward which every young man has a tendency. We see it in every character and the way they allow themselves to be manipulated in order to gain approval. George is lonely, so he acts out aggressively against Sam. Marty is angry and is mistreated and manipulated by his older brother. He in turn manipulates Clyde and, to some extent, Rocky. Rocky holds this same type of power over Sam.

The ending of the film shows these extremely real characters deciding whether to continue down this path of cowardice or to stand up to it. I think the film's conclusion holds one of the secrets to becoming a man.

I would highly recommend Mean Creek.