Steal Me (2005)

44% of critics liked it
(16 reviews)
39% of users liked it
(96 ratings)

A family goes through some changes when an unusual sort of drifter crosses their path in this independent coming-of-age drama. Jake (Danny Alexander) is a homeless 15-year-old kid with a fondness for stealing things and a precocious appetite for older women. Jake is passing through a small Montana… More A family goes through some changes when an unusual sort of drifter crosses their path in this independent coming-of-age drama. Jake (Danny Alexander) is a homeless 15-year-old kid with a fondness for stealing things and a precocious appetite for older women. Jake is passing through a small Montana town as he continues his search for the mother who abandoned him years before when he meets Tucker (Hunter Parrish) while stealing the radio out of his truck. Though Tucker is a bit older than Jake, Jake's rough-and-tumble existence has added a few years to his life experience, and after a scuffle over the radio, the boys become fast friends. Tucker brings Jake home for a square meal, and while Tucker's father (John Terry) is wary of the young drifter, he agrees to let him stay for a few days in the family's barn. However, it turns out Dad was right not to trust Jake; not only does he get caught stealing trinkets from Tucker's younger sister, he becomes amorously involved with a married middle-aged woman who lives nearby. While Jake tends to this affair and toys with the trust of the family who has taken him in, he also offers some advice to Tucker on how to win the attentions of Lily Rose (Paz de la Huerta), a neighborhood girl he has a crush on. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 35 min.
Directed By: Melissa Painter
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Jun 10, 2005 Wide
On DVD: Jun 19, 2007

Critic Reviews

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Steal Me is a beautifully realized small film of understated power.
Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times
Everything about Steal Me, the new feature from the writer and director Melissa Painter, feels dangerously overripe.
Jami Bernard, New York Daily News
Drifter comes to small town, gets all the ladies hot. But it's not the steamy, literate Picnic, starring William Holden - instead it's the pretentious Steal Me, an artily photographed, puzzlingly acted indie.
Lou Lumenick, New York Post
Solid performances can't save Melissa Painter's pretentious teen drama Steal Me, which plays like a cross between Dangerous Skin (without the gay sex) and Picnic (without the production values or credible situations).
Ben Kenigsberg, Village Voice
Steal Me has at least one indie-film cliché too many.
John Anderson, Variety
What it lacks is believable dialogue, credible relationships and a serious foundation for its overripe psychology.
Sean Axmaker, MSN.com
Melissa Painter's slice of rural family drama is an ambitious character study in a modest frame.
Harry Haun, Film Journal International
[Painter's] best achievement is the way she skillfully manipulates her almost-known cast into complicated characters that you can care about.
Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly
It's not really original stuff, and there are few genuine surprises, but Painter skillfully layers visual details and off-the-cuff dialogue into a smart, condescension-free piece on small towns and the complicated lives they contain.
Jonathan W. Hickman, Entertainment Insiders
The often meandering Steal Me is a film that says just enough and leaves the rest to us to work out.
Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide
If Alexander's performance isn't exactly a revelation, he's modest enough to allow pros like Seymour, a gifted actress usually relegated to supporting roles, do their thing.
Kent Turner, Film-Forward.com
The plot is never overwrought, but it never fully ripens either, mostly because of some of the actors' self-consciousness and the stop-and-go pace.
, E! Online
The result is a film imbued with the tender awkwardness and poignancy of those first wary explorations--those electric moments that occur in the small space between childhood and newly discovered maturity.
Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics
Big Sky Country offers up an introspective teen drama about a teenage kleptomaniac who can't steal a break.
Jeremy Mathews, Film Threat
Nobody in the film is going to steal the audience's attention span.
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
A garbage bin for contrived poetic platitudes and ruminations on sex and stealing.