Skip to main content

Plot

In this weakly limned melodrama, Marvin (John Cassavetes) is a homeless man who stops the 11-year-old Tige (Gibran Brown) from killing himself one night, and after a bumpy start, the two become as close as a father and son. Tige's real father left him long ago, his mother has just died, and Tige is seriously ill himself. Marvin takes this in and then hunts down Tige's father (Billy Dee Williams), who is married and the father of three other children. After some initial reluctance, the father finally accepts Tige into his household, but the boy's life does not necessarily get any better from there. With a plot that is transparently melodramatic and characters barely etched on the surface, the intention to manipulate viewers with "tragic" scenes is uncomfortably apparent.
MPAA Rating:
PG-13
Genre(s):
Drama
Run Time:
104min.
Theatrical Release Date:
02/01/2001
Director(s):
Eric Weston , Wanda Dell
Starring:
John Cassavetes , Billy Dee Williams , Denise Nicholas , Gibran Brown , Fay Hauser
Themes:
Suicide,Fathers and Sons,Unlikely Friendships
Tone:
Tearjerking,Intimate,Poignant
Keywords:
bonding [relationship],boy,child,cross-cultural-relations,culture [social culture],death,disease,father,friendship,loneliness,middle-age,relationship,runaway [from home],street-smart,suicide,urban-problems