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Director: Scott Hicks
Cast: Clive Owen, Emma Booth, Laura Fraser, George MacKay, Nicholas McAnulty
Run Time: 104 minutes
Country: Australia/United Kingdom
Year: 2009
Language: English
Rating: PG (Coarse language)
A Special Presentation at the 2009 Toronto International
Film Festival®, The Boys Are Back marks the triumphant
return of director Scott Hicks following his Academy
Award®-winning film Shine. Based on the memoir by Simon
Carr, The Boys Are Back stars Clive Owen (Children of Men,
Elizabeth: The Golden Age) as Joe Warr, a habitually roguish
sports writer living in Australia who becomes a single parent
under tragic circumstances.
After his wife dies suddenly, Joe is saddled with the responsibility
of raising Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) and Harry (George
MacKay), his two young sons from different marriages. Both
boys desperately need their father. Artie struggles to cope with
the loss of his mother, while Harry, who’s visiting from England,
yearns to understand why his dad left him and his mother in
London. Determined to reunite his family, Joe devises a Peter
Pan-like strategy of no rules whatsoever, only to find he has a
lot to learn about fatherhood and about himself.
Poignant and humorous, The Boys Are Back is a gentle
and smartly played story enlivened by drama and tremendous
acting. The multi-talented, charismatic and moody
Owen shines as Joe, his performance complemented by
Hicks’s toned-down direction, which gets close to the
actors and conveys their unspoken feelings without
becoming bogged down in sentiment. Heart-rending and
honestly emotional, The Boys Are Back is handled with equal
amounts of tenderness and understanding as it explores
what it means to be a parent.
“The pain of divorce and the tragedy of a parent’s death
supply the raw emotional materials of The Boys Are Back,
making it all the more impressive that director Scott
Hicks steers clear of the maudlin and the manipulative in
his sensitively wrought adaptation of Simon Carr’s 2001
memoir.” – Justin Chang, Variety
Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/boysareback
Official Site: www.boysarebackmovie.com
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