By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
Stand By Me. You remember it (you can't forget it, it's played on free-to-air TV about once a month): seminal movie about kids growing up in smalltown America, launched River Phoenix and Kiefer Sutherland, full of the misty-eyed sentimentality that only Rob
Reiner could direct and a tale about a dead kid could evoke. From a story, which may surprise, by horrormeister Stephen King.
This new release might as well be Stand By Me 2, as King revisits the territory and stripmines his childhood memories. Like Stand By Me, the narrator is a middle-aged man recalling his 1960s childhood, when he was 11-year-old Bobby (Anton Yelchin). His father died when he was 5 and his mother (Hope Davis) is concentrating on more adult matters.
Bobby's life consists of roaming the countryside with his best friend and the girl he has a crush on, until his mother takes in a boarder, Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins). Ted and the lad strike up a friendship. One day Ted asks Bobby to keep a lookout for the "Low Men", who are after Ted because they want to exploit his ability to see the future, which Bobby shares.
The task is little more than a metaphor for Bobby's journey on the path that we all must take, from childhood to the realities of adult life. You may feel you've been down this road before. Hopkins certainly looks as if he's bored with it.
Rental video, DVD: Today
• DVD features: movie (101min); commentary by director Scott Hicks; Hicks interviews Hopkins; theatrical trailer; stills gallery; cast and film-maker information.
