El hombre de seis dólares cincuenta
2009 · 14m · Nueva Zelanda
Directed by Louis Sutherland, Mark Albiston
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: melancholic, tender
In 1970s New Zealand, eight-year-old Andy is forced to leave his imaginary superhero world to face the constant mockery and fights of the school playground.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent coming-of-age film about imagination vs. reality, which is approximately the 47th time that exact collision has been filmed — Sutherland and Albiston play it straight when the premise deserves to be upended.
A formally assured entry in the bildungsroman tradition, grounded in 1970s New Zealand specificity and executed with the kind of visual and tonal discipline that suggests filmmakers fluent in their lineage.
The decision to cut between Andy's vivid superhero fantasies and the muted, tactile reality of the playground — using color and editing pace as the whole emotional argument — is the filmmaking move that makes a familiar story feel earned and singular.