The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (2013)

A deeply thoughtful movie about two charming kids who end up going it alone in the projects when their addicted mother is taken away. We are taken into the bowels of a pretty realistic low income housing world in New York City. The portrayal of the dangers might actually be watered down a bit, and it feels weirdly depopulated a lot of time, but the squalor and the general grim feeling works.

What clinches this movie, and no one will argue this, is the performances of both the leading actors, Mister and Pete. Mister, an African-American kid with thoughtful eyes, is about 12 and he's weirdly calm and sanguine through all the disasters. Pete, an Asian kid with sweet innocence written all over him, is a few years younger and needs Mister's protection. The odd but true friendship between the two is a lot of the movie, but the way each has to deal with the outside world in a series of difficult (and ugly and profane) incidents is what gives it depth.

It's fair to say this movie, and its African-American director George Tillman, have been overlooked. See it. It may not take creative leaps and it may not push every button at exactly the right time, but it has the sincerity and stunning leading actors to make it an important new film.

You may have two female singers turned actors, you may have Anthony Mackie and Jeffrey Wright (in roles you might not expect them, especially the former), but the real stars are the two kids. It's amazing how they play their roles. This movie is really gripping and it's all because of the two children who make this movie. The casting people and whoever else was responsible for getting them cannot get enough praise for the job they did.

Same as mentioned above goes for the children, but also the script and the directing. You never feel like you are being preached at and it still manages to convey its message. On the disc I watched there are a few deleted scenes, which are also worth watching. Some might even say, they should've been in the movie too. That's for you to judge, but won't take anything from the impact of the movie, only enhance it

There are films like Tiny Furniture that detail a spoiled and ungrateful demographic that has all they can desire but still has the nerve to complain about trivialities in their lives. Then there are films like The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete that detail a demographic that has nothing but the clothes on their backs, local acquaintances, and the motivation of survival to get them through the day. The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete is a bleak, bleak film with one heartwrenching scene after another that depict a frighteningly inevitable sadness that looms over the characters of the film like a dark storm cloud.

The film takes place during a summer in the projects of New York City that has been graced with a miserable heatwave. Where center on thirteen-year-old Mister (Skylan Brooks), who lives with his heroin-addicted mother Gloria (Jennifer Hudson), who prostitutes to get by in her rough neighborhood. Mister's only companion is a nine-year-old Korean boy named Pete (Ethan Dizon), whose mother is always absent and whom looks to Mister as an older brother. After Gloria is taken by police, the two spend their summer trying to evade child protective services and living life cooped up in a small, empty apartment.

Through these children, we get an intimate portrait of what it's like not to live in the projects but survive in them. The area is incredibly tumultuous, shady adults and ominous characters lurk on every street corner, and there's almost no hope of ever escaping or rising above this morose landscape. Returning to my opening paragraph, say people outside of the United States, who weren't wholly knowledgeable on the current state of the US poverty conditions, the income inequality, or the economy, saw Tiny Furniture. They'd probably see a large part of the country as affluent and ungrateful degenerates who don't know how good they have it compared to others. Now what if we showed them The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete? If anything, I think we'd break down any preconceived stereotypes that many people in the United States don't live lavish lives of royalty, but instead, day-by-day, struggling to survive, in the self-proclaimed "greatest country in the world." But this is just one of the several reasons why The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete is such a wonderful drama, bursting at the seams with stone-cold honesty and depictions of far-too-common hardships in the working class sector of urban landscapes.

At the center of the film is Skylan Brooks, who is the actor the entire film rests on. For a debut performance, Brooks could not have a bigger challenge, but he handles it superbly, painting the picture of a kid who is down but certainly not out. However, Brooks' Mister is undoubtedly vulnerable in this land, no matter the face he puts on. We almost consistently wait for the young kid to crack and breakdown, but he continues to keep on going through trying circumstances. By his side quite frequently is Ethan Dizon, whose performance is mostly wrapped in innocence and tender, young-boy geniality. He is a young boy who wouldn't hurt a fly, and occasionally seems out of the loop. But Dizon knows exactly how to portray this character with effectiveness so as not to make a helpless sidekick.

Frequently, the film reminded me of Alex Kotlowitz's There are No Children Here, a novel that meticulously detailed the lives of a family who lived in the Henry Horner Apartments, a former-public housing project in Chicago. The title came from the mother of the two boys the story focused on, and basically meant that because of all the young children have seen in their life - rape, murder, drugs, violence, gangs, among several other things - they were not children. They were practically adults because their innocence was taken at such a tender age they never had that blissful, childlike ignorance that almost all children have.

The children of the projects are totally different from the children of the suburbs, obviously, and writer Michael Starrbury makes strong note of that. While suburban children may ask their friends, "want to play at the park?" or even, "what did you think of school today," the characters of The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete ask one another, "is it okay to not love your mom?" and receive a response of, "you can't help but love her, but you can not like her."

Some will remark on the film's events as elements of emotional manipulation and desperate attempts by Starrbury and director George Tillman, Jr. to make us teary-eyed. I have seen many emotionally manipulative films in my day, and The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete doesn't classify as one of them because of the fact that it shows the reality of the situation in the projects. It shows what the news reports dare not penetrate. This film tells a story of survival by two kids who keep getting kicked down and tormented by horrid luck and a lackluster surrounding but persist on through thick-and-thin. Starrburry and Tillman, Jr. don't seem to care if you cry; they just care that you watch, listen, and learn.