Too Young to Die

 

Too Young to Die 1990

• Director: Robert Markowits
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Juliette Lewis, Brad Pitt, Michael Tucker, Emily Longstreth, Michael O’Keefe
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Juliette Lewis – August Osage County, The Darwin Awards, Hysterical Blindness, Strange Days, The Basketball Diaries, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Romeo Is Bleeding
• Brad Pitt – Ad Astra, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, 12 Years a Slave, Inglourious Basterds, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, World War Z, Babel, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Full Frontal, Fight Club, Meet Joe Black, Twelve Monkeys, True Romance, Johnny Suede, Thelma and Louise, The Dark Side of the Sun
• Why? Brad Pitt
• Seen: 24 November 2022 

       At thirteen Amanda (Lewis) is repeatedly raped by her step-father. Her mother blames her and runs off with the step-father. At fourteen Amanda marries her boyfriend, who deserts her after three months. She goes looking for him but runs into the predatory Billy (Pitt) who gets her into a strip club and drugs. When she flees from him she runs into nice decent Mike (O’Keefe), moves in with him, falls madly in love with him, and then he kicks her out because she’s too young.

       As the film opens she’s being arrested for murder, defended by an earnest but not completely competent lawyer (Tucker). So murder, but of Billy or of Mike?

       It’s a grim story, well acted especially by the then sixteen-year-old Lewis. 

3 ½ * of 5