Russkies Reviews

Just like River Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix actually started out his acting career as a young child. However, whereas his big brother booked some immediate success, Joaquin Phoenix didn't get much attention as a child and it took him more than 10 years to eventually reach fame. After watching this movie, well, it was not really surprising, I'm afraid. Indeed, the whole thing was really similar to some over kids flicks such as 'The Goonies' or 'Stand by me' but it never reached the level of those movies. One of the main issue was that they never managed to get the tone right as the scenes were either too serious or too frivolous. Furthermore, the 3 protagonists were about 12 years but they still got their hands on a real gun, they drink some vodka, they beat up some guys, one of them gets threaten at point blank, another one gets shot at and almost drowned... Seriously, it was probably a little too much for a kids flick like this one. At least, Joaquin Phoenix did his best and he had a couple of good scenes but I wasn't really impressed by the performances provided by those children. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was a goodhearted family feature, it was still a failure and it is not really worth a look, except maybe if you are curious to see Joaquin Phoenix when he was a young kid.