Tom and Huck *** (1995, Brad Renfro, Jonathan Taylor, Thomas Eric Schweig) – Classic Movie Review 3518

Friendship and loyalty are the topics of the day as Jonathan Taylor Thomas’s Tom Sawyer and Brad Renfro’s Huck Finn face a life-or-death decision when they witness Injun Joe killing Doc Robinson one night in the graveyard. After someone else is accused, can they put fear aside and save an innocent man from the gallows?

Director Peter Hewitt brings out the darker elements of this robust Mark Twain story – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – playing down its sentimentality but stressing the moral and eerie sides of the tale.

The result is a good-looking, faithful and meticulously realised Walt Disney old-style adventure movie that’s still relevant and entertaining for today’s younger audiences. The two lads do a very decent job of the leads and Eric Schweig makes a splendidly creepy Injun Joe. Stephen Sommers and David Loughery make an excellent job of adapting Twain’s novel for the screenplay.

Also in the cast are Charles Rocket, Amy Wright, Michael McShane, Marian Seldes, Rachel Leigh Cook, Lanny Flaherty, Courtland Mead, Peter Mackenzie, Heath Lamberts, William Newman, Joey Stinson and Blake Heron.

Making his film debut in The Client (1994), Brad Renfro appeared in The Cure (1995), Tom and Huck (1995), Sleepers (1996) and Apt Pupil (1998). He was arrested and convicted several times for drugs possession before his death of a heroin overdose on 15 January 2008, aged 25.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3518

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