Still Hollywood at heart

Throughout the civil war that engulfed El Salvador for the whole of the 1980s, the country's impoverished citizens, cowering beneath bedsteads with cardboard walls to shield them, were merely collateral damage, except for the bewildered boys conscripted by both sides.

Luis Mandoki - the Mexican director who bestowed schmaltzy Kevin Costner vehicle Message In A Bottle on an undeserving public - has taken Oscar Torres's autobiographical account of surviving in hell and turned it into a powerful if manipulative film.

Chava (Carlos Padilla) is the man of the house since his father left, but he's still only 11 and as susceptible to a game, a song or an attack of hero-worship as the next little boy.

His worries aren't those of your average child - the army will come for him next birthday - but he can't grow up on demand, despite the surrounding violence.

Mandoki is still Hollywood at heart: his principals are outrageously beautiful, their every act designed to tug our heartstrings. But Padilla is wonderful: veering plausibly between mischief and terror, he's reminiscent of the young Jean-Pierre Leaud. Mandoki may be soppy, but he sure can pick a child actor.

Innocent Voices
Cert: 12A