I have always liked Trash a lot. I've seen it a number of times and it always really gets to me. Jeremy's acting is really powerful. I thought he did a great job in that scene where Anthony visits him in the jail. All you could see was Jeremy's eyes, but there was so much fire in them. His eyes did all the acting for him in that scene. It was awesome.
But I have a few questions. What became of the boy who shot their friend Garrett? What's his story? Did he get charged with manslaughter or something? What became of that old lady who was walking in the dark that the gang of kids confronted? Did they kill her? If they did, where is the body? Why did Anthony say "I have no family" when clearly his mother is so loving and caring about him? That was weird! Was that story Anthony wrote actually one that Sonny wrote? Because Anthony says in one scene, "I fucking stole it!" I got the impression that the 2 friends wrote stories together. In one scene they are walking together and looking at a notebook.
The friendship had great chemistry and it was believable. Like a lot of people have said on here, I was not sure how to take Sonny sometimes. It was hard to understand how a guy who helps his family and is so nice and generous can also be so filled with rage and hate. For a while, I thought he just vents his rage at rich people (the older woman seemed "well to do"), but CJ and her little brother are from a rich family, and he was nice to them. It seems like in spite of his kindness and unselfishness, most everyone thinks of him as "trash". His sister Jackie is not all that nice to him even when he helps her buy food for the little kids (I loved that one scene with his niece in his lap). She seems to think he's just a punk who won't amount to anything. Sonny's parents are atrocious to him. Pretty much all the "respectable" people in town dismiss him as worthless. It seems like after his Dad beat him up, he just cracked and went on this huge crime spree. I had a really hard time when he tried to hit the dog (Did he really hit the dog, or did he hit a different tree?).
In spite of the bad things he's done, imagining what it's like to be Sonny is painful. Anthony had pain in his heart too (and was in denial about it) but Sonny was really going through hell after Garrett was killed. And like another fan said, nobody seems to give a rat's ass. Sonny is the one who had "no family". No support system of any kind. I can't imagine how alone he must have felt, and when he feels jealous and afraid when Anthony talks about moving away and going to college, it's perfectly understandable. They just lost their friend. It's too much change in such a small amount of time, plus Sonny really felt that he'd never be able to leave Keystone. He acted like he was content with good drinking, fighting and girl-chasing, but that was a cover. The real issue was he didn't think he'd ever belong anywhere else, and had nothing to offer.
After he decided he would like to join Anthony and leave town, it's hard to know his true motives. Either he was really stupid, or he he purposefully sabotaged both himself and Anthony when he robbed that jewelry store.
A good conversation that might come up with this movie is the fact that change is hard, even when it's not forced by tragedy and death. When some "poor white trash kid" doesn't get any support while his best friend has a nice Mom and a nice girlfriend to support him, plus a possible scholarship to college, it's no wonder he goes off the deep end and tries everything in the book to keep his friend in town. Most would say he was just a malicious, jealous ass who didn't want Anthony to be happy, but truly, what I got was that Sonny simply didn't want to be left totally alone with nobody to talk to at all.
There was a scene where Sonny called himself and all of the poor people with no way out "the walking dead". The scene where Anthony dreams that Sonny is drowning in the river never fails to shake me up. The poor in America really are the forgotten. You see them every now and then on those "Feed the Children" infomercials, but that's about it.
I agree with everyone who says it's a pretty depressing movie that makes me a angry. Thank God it's only a movie.
Oh and just one more thing: I think that asshole Judge shot Bobby on purpose. He never did like him much. After all, he left their mother right after he was born!
Back to TRASH
trash