'Phantom Halo': A messy mix of tropes

Phantom Halo, a searing family drama about sons and fathers, has all the elements of a potentially good first film, including strong performances from its two young leads. Sadly, director Antonia Bogdanovich's feature debut misses wide off the mark.

Messy and confused, the film is a mishmash of tropes from Shakespeare, heist movies, family melodrama, and romance novels hastily thrown together.

Rising British star Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Game of Thrones, The Maze Runner) plays Samuel Emerson, an intelligent Los Angeles teen who has been yanked out of school and put to work as a street performer by his bullying, alcoholic father Warren (The Originals' Sebastian Roché).

His job: Recite Shakespeare on the sidewalk in the city's upscale areas while his older brother Beckett (Luke Kleintank, Pretty Little Liars, Bones) picks onlookers' pockets.

A failed actor who once performed on the London stage, Warren likes to think of himself as a sophisticated professional gambler. In reality, as Beckett reminds him, he's just a professional loser.

Warren, whose wife ran away years earlier, is totally dependent on his boys, who have to hide money away from him so they can pay the bills.

Sam endures this ordeal by fantasizing he's the protagonist of a comic book called The Phantom Halo. "I'd love to be able to outrun [Dad] like the Phantom Halo," he says. "And be able to disappear to another place."

Ever the realist, his brother reminds him: "There is no place."

When a loan shark threatens to harm Sam if his dad doesn't produce the $38,000 he owes, Beckett and his pal, fellow abused kid Larry (Jordan Dunn), hatch a plan to steal counterfeit cash Larry has been printing for his mom Rose's (Rebecca Romijn) sometime lover Donny (Ashley Hamilton). Beckett also manages to develop a romance with Rose.

There are gangsters, one played by Saw's Tobin Bell, a shoot-out, an attempted rape, and a lots of Shakespearean voice-overs. Despite its occasional charm, this film is as harebrained as Beckett's plot.

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