Actors don't come much edgier than Clive Owen. In Croupier, Sin City, Inside Man, Children of Men, The International, Duplicity, and especially The Closer -- for which he was Oscar-nominated -- Owen's edge was front and center. That's part of the reason he was in the running as the new James Bond.
In The Boys Are Back, he tucks the edge away without entirely abandoning it, showing a somewhat softer and more outwardly charming side. But his brooding countenance remains on display.
The Boys Are Back is a family comedy-drama inspired by a true story. Its opening image, a dad driving along the beach at top speed as his young son perches dangerously on the hood of the car, proves to be a metaphor for the whole film -- and we react to it as we will to what follows.
Owen (right) plays a grieving widower trying in his own way to steer himself and his family back on track with what might be called "free-range fatherhood."
He plays Joe Warr, a grief-stricken British sportswriter who moved to Australia with his second wife (Laura Fraser), but lost her to cancer. Her tragic death continues to devastate him and he frequently communes with her ghost.
His parenting style with his two sons -- the six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) of his late wife and a rebellious teenager (George MacKay) from a previous marriage who has come from England to live here for the summer -- is now hands-on but laissez-faire in the extreme: this is his way of filling the hole his late wife left behind and bringing joy back into their deeply saddened lives.
Their all-male household is like a chaotic fraternity house where disarray is the decorating style, playtime is anytime, the female influence of a house mother is nowhere to be found, and this permissive caregiver's domestic philosophy is spelled out on the refrigerator with alphabet magnets: "Just Say Yes."
It's as if, because in their judgment the worst thing imaginable has already happened to this family, there's no longer any reason to worry about consequences -- an interesting viewpoint with which most parents would probably, in general, disagree.
The amount of freedom Joe gives his boys can look a lot like irresponsibility or recklessness to others in the community, such as the single mom (Emma Booth) whom he starts dating and his mother-in-law (Julia Blake) -- and, it should be noted, to us in the audience as well.
It's certainly viewed in that light when, reluctantly, Joe leaves the boys home alone and goes off to cover the Australian Open. We know there will be repercussions and, indeed, there are.
Veteran director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis, No Reservations), working from an Allan Cubitt screenplay loosely based on Aussie journalist Simon Carr's 2001 memoir, tells his story without resorting to too much in the way of heart-tugging.
But, as eminently watchable as leading man Owen is, as he shows us his character's faults and weaknesses without squandering our rooting interest in him, our ambivalence about his character's parenting style keeps us from giving ourselves over wholeheartedly to an otherwise admirable film about a family dealing with loss.
That said, we'll nonetheless raise 2½ stars out of 4 for the poignant fatherhood dramedy The Boys Are Back. Like Owen's protagonist, it's flawed. But, also like him, it's compelling and worthwhile.
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Owen (right) plays a grieving widower trying in his own way to steer himself and his family back on track with what might be called "free-range fatherhood." 
