Liam

A refreshingly modest, yet very affecting look at the bleak life of struggling, working-class Catholics in 1930s Liverpool, as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy, Liam is similar in setting, circumstance, and sooty sense of humor to 1999's Irish poverty yarn Angela's Ashes. More a depiction of simple hardship than abject misery, however, Liam tracks its cheerful, cherubic and shy (due to a wicked stuttering problem) hero through the frightful reprimands of a domineering Catholic school while his older brother (David Hart) and sister (Megan Burns) become wage-earners when the closing of the steel mill puts their father (Ian Hart) out of work. Versatile and perceptive director Stephen Frears (The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity) brings you close to the hearts of the children (Burrows and Burns give spectacularly unaffected performances), even as their da's crushed pride leads him to join an anti-Semitic, anti-Irish militant movement with tragic results. Although it runs into narrative trouble from time to time, Liam never comes off as if it's regurgitating cobblestone and brick tenement clichés. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)