I don't know what it was exactly that caused this film to be so derided by general audiences in New Zealand. At worst it was regarded as a miserable failure replete with unappealing, juvenile humor. At best, it was apparently appraised as a disappointment - something of a missed opportunity perhaps.
What propels the story forward is Nige's recent decision to leave the flat he had been living in with Deano for 7 years to move in with his workmate Gavin. Gav is a chronic do-gooder who entertains pipe dreams of writing poetry and swimming with the dolphins. He is as endearingly half-witted as all three of them but the fundamental difference is that he can act out of a greater good by his own volition. In other words, he's everything Deano isn't, minus the inborn stupidity.
When Nige accidentally runs over a Norwegian backpacker who turns out to be an international soccer star, he panics and throws the corpse into the nearest roadworks manhole. Desperate, panicky, and helplessly stupid Nige turns to Deano in his hour of need. Deano proceeds with shocking enthusiasm to plot a harebrained scheme to get rid of the corpse and get Nige off the hook scot-free. Much like Sarkie's earlier film Scarfies, the ideal of how to manage this criminal situation doesn't match the reality and what ensues is a painful succession of horrifyingly ill-executed attempts to dispose of the body, all of which is very much in the vein of macabre, black humor. Once Gavin is hooked into this chronic misadventure and the incompetent police force get involved, Deano's plan spirals into a violent downward trajectory. In spite of all that, this isn't a film that is ultimately about guilt or morality. Nor does it have anything to do with reality in the strictest sense. It's a platform for black humor and social commentary. The real backbone of this film is Deano's never-ending determination to keep his hopeless, yet ultimately necessary, relationship with Nige intact.
I'm not saying this film is a masterpiece. I'm not even saying that the basic concept and storyline is hugely original, by any means. But it does venture into darker, more unpleasant territory in regards to human nature and experience than most film makers, especially in this country, are willing to venture into.Two Little Boys remains doggedly determined throughout to stick with its perverse, unsettling storyline. On top of this, I think that Deano's tragically misguided sense of loyalty and his eventual grappling with his own conscience (however short-lived it may be) becomes strangely touching even if you might feel you have been somewhat bludgeoned into feeling that way.
I think this film rose to the status of being well above the average kiwi film for several reasons. For one thing, I think that all members of the cast performed their roles with excellence. I also thought that the cinematography was roundly excellent. Invercargill was captured from all of its most flattering angles (all five of them, at least!) and the eerie silence that echoed through its empty streets effectively conveyed its position as one of the world's most distant outposts. On top of that, I really think the script that was adapted from Duncan Sarkie's novel captured a world, as tiny and as uninteresting as it might be. The same could be said for the dialogue. While it's obviously not the most literary of sources, the crass,juvenile, gruffly toned exchanges between all the characters extended to deeper issues of male repression, hostility and parochial hatred that lingers beneath New Zealand's placid surface. The act of manslaughter and the ease and indifference it was carried out with also had sinister undertones. Right down to the 15 year old prison sentence Deano carries out So far as the acting goes; Mackenzie's Nige is played with both exaggerated slow-wit and a demented, uncontrollable anxiousness that befits the characters child-like fragility at heart. Pohatu's Gav was almost note-perfect in the way he played a character who was at once heart-rendingly innocent and tragically,painfully ill-fitted to the harsher realities of the world. It was Blake in his role as Deano that really stole the show for me though. Within the context of what the film tried to achieve, his down to earth, matey, she'll-be-right persona coupled with his relentlessly ill-conceived sense of loyalty towards Nige was both truly unsettling and painfully frank. As impossible to like as Deano might be, as unforgivable and plain-retarded as his chosen actions might prove, Deano is what gives this film a real sense of pathos. Sure, he befits the basic stereotype of a bullying, arrogant wanna-be Kiwi Alpha Male but this is a character who is ultimately a victim. A victim of his own stupidity and desperation, sure. But Deano befits a wider stereotype nonetheless. The only difference is that he has none of the same power or influence. He is the lame duck, just like the other two, treading water This is all my own interpretation. I could be wildly missing the point. But there's something of a scathing indictment of male identity in New Zealand in this film and that could be one reason for its lack of popularity.
At the end of the day, as strange, unsettling, perverse, macabre and twisted as this film might be, it lives up to its title concept very well. Sure, many of Deano's actions might appear sinister and at times they certainly are. But we can't forget that Nige is ultimately complicit in his lies as well. They are two eternally hopeless characters who ineluctably drawn towards one another with a fatal breed of co-dependence. In spite of the horrendous actions they carry out, they return to their child-like bubble with disturbing ease. It's a film about two very, sad desperate characters and Sarkies has succeeded in putting his indelible stamp on yet another film. It's just a shame that the audiences weren't very receptive or appreciative of his film this time around.
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