A powerful and surprisingly moving film about a boy drawn into gang culture (in New Zealand, but it could've been set anywhere) and growing into a man to whom violence is not just the only thing he knows, but the only thing he can understand. The depiction of the lives these outlaws lead is uncompromising. Rather than glamourising them, the dirt and squalor of their existence is starkly depicted. The performances are excellent throughout, but Jake Ryan is superb in the central role of Danny, aka Damage, who slowly comes to realise that whilst he has undoubtedly been failed by his father and the various authorities in whose "care" he grows up, he has also catastrophically failed himself.
