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Jesus Christ, did the makers of this know at the time that they were inadvertently underscoring and signing off on a truly contemptible character study? Actually, a character study would imply that the main character experiences anything resembling coherent growth or reason for acting out in the ways that he does, but this very much does not. Instead, Standing Tall tries to glorify social workers as hagiographic individuals involved with the public.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to glorify social workers – they do hard jobs with a huge emotional toil with little respect and even less money – but Standing Tall gives them an ill-defined character to act opposite against. Maloney (Rod Paradot) isn’t a character so much as a composite of the various social ills prevalent in society. His heel-turn change in the final minutes feel less like a natural product of the script and a predetermined landing that had to be reached at all costs. Why exactly do they extend chance after chance to so vile a boy when he clearly can’t be bothered to self-reflect or do the hard work of maturing and growing up?
And that’s the major problem with Standing Tall, the center cannot hold as it is so poorly rendered. When his mother dubs him a “monster” early in the film, everything is so new that it’s hard to see why she thinks this. As the film goes on, we’re clearly intended to rethink that description and give him space to find his humanity, but there’s no reason to invest in his journey. Maloney is nothing but a series of psychotic behaviors, including a forced love story that finds him turning consensual sex into a violent assault.
Catherine Deneuve, Paradot, and Benoît Magimel act the hell out of every scenario, but it’s not enough to make the slog through the film worth it. This isn’t exactly the glorification of social workers or a glimpse of a person discovering their humanity that was intended, but a gross exploitative affair of pressing sociological matters. Standing Tall needs to sit its ass back down.
