Little Boy

Little Boy is a fable, and it works best when viewed as one. Jakob Salvati plays eight-year-old Pepper Flynt Busbee with enormous expressiveness — all big eyes and fierce determination. The film's central conceit — that a child's faith might be powerful enough to move a mountain (or end a war) — could have been either charming or insulting, and it lands somewhere in between. The WWII setting is rendered with period detail and a warmth that recalls classic Hollywood. Emily Watson and Michael Rapaport provide strong adult performances. The subplot involving Pepper's friendship with a Japanese-American man (played with quiet dignity by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) addresses wartime prejudice with more nuance than the main plot sometimes shows. The film's biggest problem is the ending, which connects Pepper's faith to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima — a deeply uncomfortable link that the film doesn't fully reckon with. Some viewers find it offensive; others see it as an honest exploration of how faith and history intersect in troubling ways. Director Alejandro Monteverde has style and heart; the execution just doesn't always match the ambition.