Leonardo DiCaprio in his first leading role plays Toby, something of a tearaway and failing at school. He moves with his mother, played by Ellen Barkin to Concrete, Seattle in the hope that she can settle down with a new husband. However she finds and marries Dwight (Robert De Niro) who turns out to be a deeply unpleasant, violent man with a vast inferiority complex who is jealous of Toby's charm, gift of the gab and general chutzpah.
Not a very pleasant watch as the film builds and builds on De Niro's growing fury at DiCaprio for seemingly little reason resulting in DiCaprio's growing depression at the prospect of living with Dwight in boring Concrete forever and never amounting to anything. What is attractive here is the wonderfully confident performance from DiCaprio who more than holds his own against heavyweight De Niro, albeit herein lies the problem. De Niro's character is so dark, angry, over the top and just plain childish as to make him into an admittedly well acted, pantomime villain in a black hat which rather unbalances the 3 way drama that this should have been. Anyway, it's a good, albeit hard watch and notable for DiCaprio.
Not a very pleasant watch as the film builds and builds on De Niro's growing fury at DiCaprio for seemingly little reason resulting in DiCaprio's growing depression at the prospect of living with Dwight in boring Concrete forever and never amounting to anything. What is attractive here is the wonderfully confident performance from DiCaprio who more than holds his own against heavyweight De Niro, albeit herein lies the problem. De Niro's character is so dark, angry, over the top and just plain childish as to make him into an admittedly well acted, pantomime villain in a black hat which rather unbalances the 3 way drama that this should have been. Anyway, it's a good, albeit hard watch and notable for DiCaprio.