‘Little Boy’
A
The premise of “Little Boy” is simple: a son desperately wants his father to come home.
Yet the delivery is touching and symbolic.
Jakob Salvati plays 8-year-old Pepper Flynt Busbee. Pepper is constantly teased for his short stature and so has been given the nickname Little Boy.
After his father is taken as a prisoner of war in Japan, Little Boy seeks the strength and confidence to bring his dad home.
He initially gets this empowerment from his comic book idol, crime-fighting magician Ben Eagle. During one of Eagle’s live shows, Little Boy is chosen to come on stage, where he appears to move a bottle through sheer faith.
Faith is a central theme of the movie.
Little Boy is next guided in his goal by a priest at a Spanish mission. The priest gives him a list of tasks that others have done to strengthen their faith. The priest implies if Little Boy completes the list, he might develop enough faith to bring his father back.
Taking the priest’s words to heart, Little Boy immediately sets out to finish the items on the list including feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and visiting those in prison. He also has an extra task, which the priest added to the “ancient” list: befriend Hashimoto.
Hashimoto, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, is the only Japanese resident in a small California town where anti-Japanese sentiment is high.
His and Little Boy’s relationship does not get off to a good start. Early on in the movie, Little Boy’s older brother, London, played by David Henrie, leads the two to attack Hashimoto’s house.
Influenced by his brother and the town’s feelings toward people of Japanese descent, it takes a while for Little Boy to befriend Hashimoto. But in the process, the boy gets help with the rest of his list.
It is through the development of Hashimoto and Little Boy’s friendship that the other prominent theme of accepting people for who they are emerges. Similar to Little Boy, Hashimoto faces ridicule from the town but on a much larger scale.
Though the plot of “Little Boy” is faith-based, people of all faiths, as well as those without faith in an organized religion, can appreciate the messages and themes in the movie.
At the core of faith, after all, is hope and perseverance in the face of unlikely odds. These are themes presented well in the film through a simple but powerful storyline and superb acting.
“Little Boy” is a nice change of pace amid a lineup of action-packed thrillers, dramas and superficial comedies.
