It's the difficulty of growing up due to parts of yourself that you lose in the process specially if you're physically impaired. This is the point that the film drives home quite well.

Great acting by young Danny Murphy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Scott McNairy and Aaron Paul. They make sure that we get it. The interaction between Aaron Paul and Danny Murphy (who's really deaf in real life) is so heartwarming more so because Wesley is hungry for a father's affection. You wished it would've ended differently. But that it did the way it did makes it more memorable.

It's shot in winter, and the drabness heightens Wesley's passage to a new life stage, gloomy but wiser.

This scheme of a friendship between a boy and a fugitive is not new at all, we already have seen this before. But this little movie is really well done, with convincing acting and directing too. This is a psychological drama and a character study. I would have easily imagined Mathias Schoenaerts in the fugitive role. Maybe because he is so in love with horses - why not a tribute to Sterling Hahden's character in ASPHALT JUNGLE - as Schoenaerts was in NEVADA.

Danny Murphy portrays Wesley here, a lonely, hearing-impaired, and bullied 10-year-old boy who bonds with a wounded fugitive (Aaron Paul) after Wesley finds him in the snows of North Dakota. Wesley offers the fugitive shelter and food while he recovers and in return receives much need life's lessons.

The pacing here is extremely slow and some of the plot elements are nonsensical, like how can Wesley's mother (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) have seemingly no clue that her son is gone for long periods of time. Although the acting is solid, with Winstead being one of my favorite actresses, the lack of energy in the film hampered it greatly, in my opinion.

Overall, although I was interested enough to stay with the movie to see how it would eventually turn out, it just became too much of a slog.