TATTOO BOY

In a nameless, affluent city, Sam, a bisexual hustler with a dawning conscience, begins to suspect there must be a better life somewhere. His 17-year-old girlfriend Arizona knows there is, but she needs money so the two of them can run away and find it. Shane, 14, may or may not have killed his parents and now amounts to fresh meat on the streets for the ever-prowling child molesters when he hooks up with Sam and Arizona. Will Shane provide a means of escape or their undoing? It's been compared to Larry Clark's controversial “Kids,” but TATTOO BOY, less graphic and filmed in and around Dayton, Ohio, has a midwestern sensibility and impact all its own. Filmmaker Larry Turner does not judge his three protagonists for the paths they have taken, but finds faint hope in the way the young look out for one another in a society filled with pitfalls and predators.- Charles Cassady