Boy

Boy is a 2010 New Zealand comedy-drama film, written and directed by Taika Waititi. The film stars James Rolleston, Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, and Waititi. It is produced by Cliff Curtis, Ainsley Gardiner and Emanuel Michael and financed by the New Zealand Film Commission. In New Zealand, the film eclipsed previous records for a first week's box office takings for local production. Boy went on to become the highest-grossing New Zealand film at the local box office. The soundtrack to Boy features New Zealand artists such as The Phoenix Foundation, who previously provided music for Waititi's film Eagle vs Shark. Plot In 1984, Alamein, known as Boy, is an 11-year-old living in Waihau Bay, in the Tairawhiti (Gisborne) region of New Zealand, on a small farm with his grandmother, younger brother Rocky, and several cousins. Boy spends his time dreaming of Michael Jackson, hanging out with his friends Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon Crest Tane (all siblings), trying to impress Chardonnay, a girl at his school, talking to his pet goat, and making up wild stories about his estranged father, Alamein. Rocky, meanwhile, is a quiet, odd child, who believes he has dangerous superpowers because his mother died giving birth to him. One day, Boy and Rocky's grandmother leaves for a funeral in Wellington, leaving Boy in charge of the house and taking care of the other children. Boy is then surprised to see his father and two other men arrive at the farm. Boy is overjoyed to see Alamein return, thinking that he has come to take the boys away to live with him, but Rocky is uncertain about their father's sudden reappearance. It seems at first that Alamein has finally come back to be in his sons' lives, but it's soon revealed that he is actually there to find a bag of money that he had buried on the farm before being arrested by the police, for armed robbery of a gas station. With his patched gang, the Crazy Horses (which is just him and two friends), Alamein begins digging up the field, searching for the money. Boy sees this and offers to help, thinking Alamein is digging for treasure, and Alamein soon decides to hang out with Boy and be a father. He cuts his son's hair to look like Michael Jackson (badly), and the two go on drives in Alamein's car and get revenge on Boy's school bullies by threatening them with a machete. Boy brings Alamein marijuana to sell from a crop grown by Dallas and Dynasty's father, a member of a local gang.