The Good Son (film)

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The Good Son
Directed by	Joseph Ruben
Produced by	Daniel Rogosin Ezra Swerdlow
Written by	Ian McEwan
Starring	Macaulay Culkin Elijah Wood
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date(s)	September 24, 1993
Running time	87 min
Country	USA
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Good Son is a 1993 thriller film directed by Joseph Ruben and written by Ian McEwan.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Reaction 3 Cast 4 Trivia 5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Mark Evans (Elijah Wood) suffers the loss of his mother. Not long afterward, his father has to go to Tokyo, Japan, for a business trip, so Mark is left at his uncle's home in Maine.

Mark soon discovers that his cousin, Henry Evans, (Macaulay Culkin) has a fascination with homemade weapons and death, and slightly psychopathic tendencies against his family members. However, Henry is so good at disguising his true nature from everyone but Mark that no one is the least bit suspicious of him. Thus, Mark's attempts to warn others about Henry are regarded as misguided cries for attention resulting from Mark's emotional trauma over the recent death of his mother. Henry's mother, Susan, is too distraught over the death of her second son Richard (whom Henry, unbeknownst to his mother, drowned when the former was a baby because Henry felt Richard was getting too much attention) to actually listen to Mark.

In the end, Susan is the one who finds out about Henry. The climax of the film has Henry trying to kill his mother by pushing her off a cliff and tossing down a large rock on her as she's dangling from a branch. Henry and Mark scuffle and fall over the cliff as Susan lunges for them and grabs each by an arm. They both vie to be the one helped up and Susan knows she can only save one. Despite her son's pleading, Susan allows Henry to drop and saves Mark.

Afterwards, Mark wonders if Susan would have made the same choice again: "I guess I'll always wonder, but I know I'll never ask."

[edit] Reaction

The film was panned by most critics, with Roger Ebert giving it half a star.

However, it received $44,789,789 in domestic box office revenues, and another $15,823,219 worldwide, for a total box office take of $60,613,008.[1]

[edit] Cast

• Macaulay Culkin: Henry Evans
• Elijah Wood: Mark Evans
• Wendy Crewson: Susan Evans
• David Morse: Jack Evans
• Daniel Hugh Kelly: Wallace Evans
• Jacqueline Brookes: Alice Davenport
• Quinn Culkin: Connie Evans

[edit] Trivia

• Michael Klesic was originally cast in the role of Henry Evans in 1988. The film was soon later put on hold due to lack of funding. A couple years later Jesse Bradford was cast as Henry Evans because the original child actors had grown too old for their parts. The project was once again put on hold and the same problem happened. In 1993, the movie was re-cast yet again and finally shot and released.

• The original director Michael Lehmann who believed that Culkin was wrong to play a sinister 12-year-old sociopath, left the project, which was put off to let Culkin finish "Home Alone 2."
• Fox executives insisted that the studio wanted Culkin for "The Good Son" all along. According to head of production Roger Birnbaum, Kit Culkin saw the script but did not respond for a number of months. Then, as the movie was nearing production with another actor in mind for the role, Culkin announced he wanted the part. The role was rewritten to make it a cute, sinister 12-year-old. Source: Newsweek, December 9, 1991.
• Richard (in picture) and Connie are played by Macaulay's real-life brother and sister.
• This is the second film in which Culkin dies. He is stung by a bee and dies in the film My Girl.
• The Good Son is somewhat based on the The Bad Seed.
• The cliff scenes were filmed in Minnesota at Split Rock Lighthouse between Two Harbors and Silver Bay, Minnesota, and at Palisade Head near the latter town, both of which have steep cliffs overlooking Lake Superior. The fight on the cliff between Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood at the end of the film was filmed on the cliff at Split Rock.[2][3] The story was set on the Atlantic Ocean but a suitable rock face could not be found, and after a search for a suitable location all over the country, the Minnesota locations were chosen. For the shots looking down at the water, power boats were used to churn up the water to simulate ocean waves before cameras were rolled. The cliff was 180 feet above water, but the top ten feet of the cliff was manufactured. It was created on top of the actual cliff out of wood and plaster and coated with a rubber material so that the actors could roll around on it and fight as needed. The stunt riggers were hidden inside the fake cliff, controlling safety cables connected to the actors when they were hanging off the side of the cliff and then Macaulay's character was dropped.
• Both Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood were trained by stunt coordinator Jack Gill. They rehearsed for six weeks prior to this scene so that they could be comfortable while hanging 180 feet above the water. When Macaulay's character was dropped by his mother (Wendy Crewson) the movie needed a shot of the real Macaulay and not a stunt double falling away from camera on the actual cliff. After discussions with Macaulay's parents and with Macaulay, he agreed to do a 30 foot fall on a cable on the actual cliff, 180 feet above a freezing Lake Superior, but he wanted one thing in return for this act of bravery: a BB gun. Macaulay performed the cable fall perfectly and was given his BB gun.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] External links

• The Good Son at the Internet Movie Database
• Roger Ebert's review