Second Best

An intense movie
William Hurt plays a grown man who still feels his parents, particularly his father didn't love him as they should have. He stays single and shy. Then he reaches out to a troubled boy, played by Chris Cleary Miles, and proceeds to adopt him. The adoption process is a bit ackward for him. The boy has serious mental problems and proves to be a challenge. This is a drama with funny and touching moments. It's too bad this movie wasn't a bigger hit.

Outstanding and Emotionally Charged Drama.
As Graham Holt, Hurt gives one of his finest performances as a 40 something Welshman who's spent his entire life living with his parents in a tiny village. With his mother's recent passing and a mute, bedridden father, the lonely Graham wonders where his life has gone. An awkward, shy man Graham believes he has something to offer and having never really felt part of his parent's lives sets out to adopt a son and begin his own family.

Soon paired up with James, an emotionally disturbed 10 year old, Graham finds there are limits to be tested, and while we may place barriers around our lives if we are honest there can be no true borders around the heart.

This is a remarkable film and leaves me wondering why its director, Chris Menges (cinematographer for some of the most beautiful movies in the last quarter century) isn't directing more often. The performance he coaxes from young Chris Cleary Miles is never short of astonishing. James is a difficult role with...

One of the Most Underrated Films of the 1990s (Ever?)
"Second Best" is not even on DVD. Few have heard of it. Its fans, judging from Amazon.com, are boy-lovers (in the erotic sense), though the film has virtually no sexual content. It's about a middle-aged postmaster (Graham) from Wales who feels the impulse to adopt a son (Jamie) and acts on it.

And WOW WOW WOW. WOW for director Chris Mendes' visuals: the lush Welsh countryside...a boy's breath fogging on a pane of glass as he waits for his prospective father... WOW for the quiet and patience of this movie, the humanism of it, which recalls 1970s films like "Whose Life Is It Anyways?" "Testament," "Breaking Away" and "Ordinary People."

WOW for Chris Cleary Miles turning in the best child acting I've ever seen, easily eclipsing Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood and even the talented Haley Joel Osmont. His demanding role as a troubled youth (which involved a lot of screen-time) asked him to be both sweet and manipulative, to make us believe he could fall either...

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