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Sweet Sixteen

Germany, Spain, United Kingdom

2002

106 Min
Color
1.85:1
English
  • Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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DIR Ken Loach

PROD Rebecca O'Brien

SCR Paul Laverty

DP Barry Ackroyd

CAST Martin Compston, William Ruane, Annmarie Fulton, Michelle Abercromby, Michelle Coulter, Gary McCormack, Tommy McKee, Calum McAlees

ED Jonathan Morris

PROD DES Martin Johnson

MUSIC George Fenton

Toronto, Cannes (In Competition): Best Screenplay, Tribeca (Showcase), AFI FEST (European Showcase)

Synopsis

In the shipyard town of Greenock, Liam is a typical teenager, in some ways, causing trouble and absorbing everything which goes on around him like a sponge. He has already has his fair share of troubles however, his mother is unjustly in prison, with a drug dealing boyfriend awaiting her release. Liam dreams of taking his mother away from all the problems in their life and starting afresh in a caravan park in the quiet village of West Kilbride. This means Liam must find a way to get money quick to fund the caravan, which leads him into all sorts of problems with the law, and makes him all sorts of new enemies, who are looking for any way to punish him. –IMDb

Director

Original

Ken Loach

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer ‘Tony Garnett’ he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating “Cathy Come Home” episode of “The Wednesday Play” (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws. He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with “Kes”, he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) (TV) and Looks and Smiles (1981… read more

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hikikomori

19May10

A great film. As the stunning end of the film drills in, its title is the blackest of humors and ironies.

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Liam Stephenson

23Feb10

the Scottish 'Scarface,' if you will. I hear a lot of people had to watch with subtitles, especially our american cousins over there.

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bulletproof

5Mar09

this movie is one of my favorites but noone likes it that much

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Maicol Andrés Ordoñez

7Feb09

FINALLY KEN IS ON THE AUTEURS! YEAH! Anyway, ahem, Ken Loach is by far one of the most relevant and important directors I've ever discovered. His movies can change the way you see movies in general. There are no such concerns as acting or plot or structure floating around in your head while watching one of his movies. It's simply life as it is.

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By Zachary W on September 9, 2009

Ken Loach’s “Sweet Sixteen” seems to me to be one of the most important British films of the last fifteen years or so, yet it rarely gets mentioned in the breath as such contemporaries as “Trainspotting…  read review

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