Kicks

Kicks has enormous potential to be a truly impressive and stimulating film about adolescence, peer pressure, adoption of behavioural patterns and social roles, and the endless cycle of violence which, at the same time, represents a spiral that leads to increasingly stubborn self-denial and identification with an attitude that is supposed to serve as armour. In the effort to reach their intended audience, the filmmakers stay on the surface and replace the provocative reflection of the protagonist’s inner self with clichéd symbolism. The message about the endless causality of violence, from which one must break free as a way out of that cycle, shows only a rakish act that brings forth nothing more than problematic heroism. Thanks not only to the casting of Mahershala Ali in the role of the mentor, Kicks comes across as a teen variation on the grandiose Moonlight, but in contrast to that film’s complexity and painful introspection, it remains stuck only in a phoney soulful teenage pose, which peculiarly ends on the surface below which Moonlight dares to dive. Some may argue that these films and approaches cannot be compared because they are targeted at different audiences, but such underestimation of teenagers helps to perpetuate the cycle of mistakes made in adolescence and the exploration and obstinate persistence of those mistakes in adulthood. (22.08.2020)

You could say it's just a movie about a guy who easily gained and easily lost, but he didn't want to give up his belongings, so he tried everything in his power to get his sneakers back. But the social situation is so well presented that I just clenched my fists at what one person can do to another. Moreover, it's all from a pleasant, almost childlike point of view, which is changing dramatically. (18.10.2016)