AllMovie

With Just Like the Son, director Morgan J. Freeman returns to the naturalistic style of Hurricane Streets with an effective tearjerker. It's the sappiest of stories -- small-time thief Daniel Carter (Mark Webber) rescues precocious afro-haired tyke Boone (Antonio A.J. Ortiz) from an orphanage and they embark on a road trip to his sister's house in Dallas. But the writing and acting by the appealing leads drive this subtle, modestly scaled melodrama so that it never wallows in sentimentality. It is essentially about an immature young man hatching a desperately misguided plan in an attempt to grow up. Whereas other movies would have relied on happy endings, this depiction of male bonding explores the struggle between responsibility and impulsiveness as Daniel tries to get in touch with his paternal instincts without marking a definitive shift to "adulthood." Webber projects the right mixture of boyishness, introspection, and vulnerability. Freeman and cinematographer Yaron Orbach's restrained visual style captures the leafy warmth and footloose uncertainty of a cross-country road trip, matched by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips' dreamy folk score.