Vivid 'Boy A' Stands Out In a Crowd

I saw "Boy A" a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, so when it was announced that "Boy A" would open today, my memory of it was admittedly hazy. A galvanizing lead performance, I recalled. Strong direction from a promising Irish filmmaker. But with my recollection dimmed by the intervening months -- so many movies, so many bad ones -- my feelings about "Boy A" were decidedly mixed.

So what a surprise when, upon viewing the film again, I discovered how very good it is. "Boy A," an adaptation of a novel by Jonathan Trigell, stars the new British actor Andrew Garfield in a stunning, breakout performance as one of the most haunting and contradictory characters to be found on-screen. Directed with unerring assurance and sensitivity by the Irish filmmaker John Crowley from a script by Mark O'Rowe, this finely tuned chamber piece is the kind of small, sharply observed film that proves that cinema doesn't have to be spectacle-driven to be spectacular. In its own astute, unshowy way, "Boy A" is a powerhouse of writing, acting and visual storytelling that plunges viewers into the life and mind of a character they care about within seconds of meeting him.

Garfield plays 24-year-old Jack Burridge, who in the film's opening scene is just getting out of prison. Nervous, shy, with fawnlike eyes and an awkward, gangly body, Jack is being ushered into freedom with the help of his social worker, Terry (Peter Mullan), whose unflappable calm acts as ballast and counterpoint to the younger man's coltish mix of excitement and apprehension.

It's not immediately clear what Jack did to wind up in prison -- that story will be told by way of unsettling shards of the past that increasingly intrude on Jack's new life -- but even as that disquieting reality casts Jack in more ambiguous relief, he has long since earned the audience's sympathy, thanks to both Crowley's compassionate direction and Garfield's pitch-perfect portrayal of vulnerability and wariness. When Jack settles in Manchester and gets a job at a warehouse, even making a best friend and falling in love with a company secretary, viewers may get the feeling that no story could proceed so happily without taking a sharp turn. And they'd be right.

What comes to light, in the course of "Boy A's" meticulous, carefully calibrated exposition of Jack's former life, is how crucial it is for him to keep his past from his new friends and neighbors. Crowley evinces a remarkable gift for structure and pacing as he ratchets up the stakes in "Boy A," which unfolds like a thriller but winds up being a powerful meditation on power, manipulation, trust and redemption. A gifted scenarist, he films Manchester and its environs with bold, arresting camera work, maximizing the city's postindustrial bleakness with simple, largely unpopulated shots of houses and alleyways. (Crowley and O'Rowe have made a film together before, a smart genre thriller called "Intermission" that features a terrific Colin Farrell performance and is worth checking out on Netflix.)

At the center of it all is Garfield, seen last year opposite Robert Redford in "Lions for Lambs," and here delivering on the promise he showed in that performance. Resembling a young Anthony Perkins, he's a lanky bundle of nervous energy and childlike warmth, which come into play with fascinating, contradictory potency as Jack redefines himself. But as much as "Boy A" provides a showcase for a rising young talent, it's essentially an ensemble piece, one that features a funny, affecting performance by Mullan as the rock-solid Terry. Shaun Evans and Katie Lyons deliver equally accomplished turns as Jack's friend and girlfriend, respectively. Even as Jack's past catches up with him, the filmmakers don't stint on the grace notes of his life at its most blissfully banal: a beery, ecstasy-fueled night out with the boys, for example, or the flirty false starts of nascent romance.

A cloud of tragedy hovers over "Boy A," and when it finally descends -- because of the very unguarded moment Jack and Terry fear most -- the film's grip begins to tighten with wrenching finality. It's in the shattering final moments of "Boy A" that I realized the source of the mixed feelings that had simmered for so long about this accomplished, thoroughly absorbing film: It's beautiful. I loved it. And it broke my heart.

Boy A (100 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is rated R for profanity, sexuality, some disturbing content and brief drug use.