The child actors were MUCH better than the adult actors. Brad Renfro was such a talented young man. It's such a shame that his life was cut so short (granted, by his choices). I really miss seeing him on screen and wonder what his adult roles would have been like.

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Let's take this time to really appreciate the beautiful acting of these fours boys. Joseph Perrino, Jonathan Tucker, Geoffrey Wigdor, and the always amazing Brad Renfro, we're just amazing picks. They played the innocent and broken boys so honestly and with such maturity and they brought tears to my eyes. I would've deff loved if these boys got more screen time, especially Jonathan, Geoffrey, and Brad. I also wished that each boy got like a solo screen time to see how they were each affected. Even tho this may sound sick and many couldn't handle it, I wish there were more of the scenes of the boys and the guards and maybe how the guard treated each boy and not just Lorenzo.
I agree very much with this post. They were all wonderful, and conveyed so much via facial expressions as much as with dialogue. Although Joe Perrino as Shakes was the main protagonist, in the film's opening credits Brad Renfro was billed above him as well as above Geoffrey Wigdor and Jonathan Tucker, probably because he was the most well-known of the four at the time. We are also in agreement that it would have been nice to see more screen time for young Michael, John and Tommy, as the last two especially suffered from lack of character development, but it's a credit to their talent that they were able to do so much with the relatively little they were given to do. I prefer the first half to the second, although the actors who played the adult versions did their best, they just couldn't match their child counterparts or recreate the rapport between the characters. I almost view the second half as a different movie entirely.
I'm surprised that in many of the reviews here the boy actors don't get the praise they should, as they literally carried the movie in the first half. Brad Renfro's portrayal is especially poignant in retrospect, not only with his tragically early death but the strong possibility that he was a sexual abuse victim in real life. It makes it all the more real for me when I watch it now. It affected me when I first saw it in theaters in 1996 as a teenager, but it resonates even more now.
And as the previous poster mentioned, the book goes into more detail regarding the home life of each boy.

If you read the book, the whole first half is about the things they did growing up. How they met and all their antics and their families. It's really good. But you also get more of the abuse, it's really graphic. But if you liked the movie, the book really gives a lot more detail.

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