Word: liam
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...piece of work, our Liam. As played by a nonactor named Martin Compston, he's not exactly handsome, but there's something about his spirit--wit and energy and an often comical inventiveness. Given a break or two, he could have become, you imagine, one of those rough-hewn entrepreneurs whose rags-to-riches stories so enliven capitalism's history...
Unfortunately, no breaks are available in Greenock, a depressed shipbuilding town in Scotland, where all the yards are closed. And for a kid nearing his 16th birthday, Liam has a lot of problems. His beloved mom is in jail for drug dealing. Her boyfriend and father are brutal small-time crooks trying to get Liam to induce her back into the criminal life even before her sentence is up. His refusal leads to a beating--and to dreams of revenge and rescue...
Sounds dour, doesn't it? But Sweet Sixteen is not a gloomy picture. It's often slyly amusing. Liam, who manages a pizza shop, cottons on to a more lucrative delivery business: a side order of drugs. He has a friend, Pinball, who is comically, often stupidly, out of control and needs a lot of career guidance. Sometimes it's a touching film, especially in the scenes dealing with Liam's sister Chantelle (Annmarie Fulton), a single mom bravely struggling to raise her baby decently in an environment full of crime and beset by hopelessness...
Mostly, though, the film runs on Liam's devilish nerve, as well as our feelings of foreboding on his behalf. As we follow him deeper and deeper into his life of crime, we sense that, smart and daring though he is, he will not be able to resist his own heedlessness, those violent flashes of temper that wipe all clever calculations out of his brain...
...some famous, most not - who provoke, inspire and generally make the world a better place. Not all of our heroes could make the event; British football star and freelance style icon David Beckham had to meet with Nelson Mandela in South Africa instead. But it was quite a night. Liam Gallagher of Oasis came by to pick up an award on behalf of the Who's Roger Daltrey, who has helped build eight hospital wards for the U.K.'s Teenage Cancer Trust. (Daltrey made a gracious speech by video from the U.S.) Bono, the Irish rocker who has become...