’12 O’Clock Boys’. Tragic as both a character study and broader social commentary on what people live for in their day-to-day struggles. Dangerous escapism as seen by outsiders looking for the temporary kind is darkly ironic.
Lotfy Nathan found someone special in Pug. Bright, ambitious, destined for doom. Nature nor nurture have been particularly good to him as a young boy, and it doesn’t look like that cycle is stopping anytime soon for him and others in Baltimore. What’s been eating away at me ever since I walked out of the theater is how much Nathan’s decision to document Pug’s quest drove him even further. Would he have done everything he did if a camera wasn’t on him? The ending seemed particularly exploitative.
You see the pursuit of power, fame and notoriety, driven all the more by social media. The film ending where it does, I’m afraid of what effects this will have on the next generation of Baltimore’s 12 O’Clock Boys.
c0up 
Being from the Baltimore area, what is portrayed in the film is nothing new in life. Its been decades these things go on. Not only here but in most urban cities along the east coast. This just the first time someone decided to document on this level and expose the rest of unknowing society. Its a shame that the director did it in a way that leaves ppl with this idea
I mean, I really appreciated getting an insight into how life is over there.
What in particular are you disappointed over in terms of the perception you think I got from the doco because of what the director portrayed? Hope I didn’t sound ignorant
I may have misunderstood you. It did sound like you had a some what negative, for lack of a better term, view on people portrayed in the film
It was dismay at the situation they’re in more than anything else.