One of this reviewer’s favorite topics lately is the cultural phenomena of how the boyhood-to-manhood rite of passage has gone missing from modern, “civilized” society.
Another favorite topic is the reason so many movies are being made about assassins and ex-assassins.
Imagine my delight upon learning the premise of “Ashby”: a fatherless, high school boy moves next door to an ex-assassin. Bingo! We predicted and explained the connection between boys who lack guidance, and assassins, in the article “Why We Like Movies About Reformed Assassins so Much,” and now they’ve gone and made a movie about that very thing.
Would that this perfect premise had been able to deliver a well-told tale of a boy becoming a man before our popcorn-stuffed faces, but it was not to be. In the way an artist does a “study” (a sketch for a painting concept), “Ashby” is a study for the engrossing, coming-of-age movie that could have been.
Geek Establishment
“You’re a bunch of Ritalin-addicted porn freaks,” says the high school English literature teacher to his class, more matter-of-factly than disapprovingly. Then he asks new-kid Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff), what he knows about Hemingway. Ed knows a lot. Which instantly lands him in the nerd box.
