Review: Emory Cohen is hot in the occasionally stalled ‘Stealing Cars’

Actor Emory Cohen, who affectingly played Saoirse Ronan’s sincere suitor in “Brooklyn,� makes good on those enthusiastic notices as a highly articulate juvenile delinquent in the tough and tender drama “Stealing Cars.�

Landing in the Bernville Camp for Boys (motto: “Walls are not barriers but foundations for castles�) with a rap sheet that includes car theft, drug-dealing and vandalism, Cohen’s Billy Wyatt is one of those too-cool-for-school smart alecks who proves to be a particularly difficult nut to crack for the detention center’s director (John Leguizamo) and a sadistic guard (Paul Sparks).

Of course, Wyatt’s challenges turn out to go much deeper than his issues with authority, and bit by bit Bernville breaks down those barriers, exposing a telltale vulnerability, especially in his dealings with a sickly inmate (Al Calderon), the on-site nurse (Heather Lind) and his estranged mother (Felicity Huffman).

Intended as a critique of the American juvenile penal system, the film, by documentary director Bradley Kaplan, incorporates a visual cinema-verité style (Kaplan previously collaborated with the late Albert Maysles) that doesn’t always jibe with the more conventionally leaning script by Will Aldis and Steve Mackall.

Although taking its inspiration from actual events, it also takes some unconvincing third-act plot turns appropriated from any number of classic rebel rousers.

But while we may have been locked up with these characters before — Paul Newman’s “Cool Hand Luke� and Jack Nicholson’s McMurphy (from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest�) among them — Cohen’s unwavering commitment nevertheless commands attention.

“Stealing Cars� might not quite make a dramatically clean getaway, but the baby-faced 26-year-old, possessing the throwback casual magnetism of a James Dean or Tony Curtis, plays it for keeps.

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“Stealing Cars�

MPAA rating: R, for language, including some sexual references, and brief drug use.

Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle’s Monica Film Center, Santa Monica.