The Paperboy (5 Stars)

I wrote a long introspective review of this film three years ago. I don't want to repeat what I said, so please check it out. I still relate to the film in the same way. Johnny McFarley is unbalanced, and I see myself in him. I could have turned out like him, if I hadn't had a wonderful loving mother.

In my last review I said that I was mentally unbalanced when I was 12, Johnny's age in the film. That's not quite true. I was more like him when I was 14. So much was going on in my head. I wanted to be loved. My mother gave me the love I needed, but it still wasn't enough. Some of my friends at school already had girlfriends. I didn't. I was obsessed with my sister's best friend, Wendy Broome, but I never had the courage to say anything to her. I wrote poems about her. To be honest, the only reason that I was obsessed with her was because she was the only girl who came into my family home.

I finally had my first girlfriend, Mandy Stickland, when I was 16. The relationship lasted three months, and after her I had many more girlfriends. There was something about me that made girls want me. I was good looking, I did a lot of sport, and more than anything else I had the reputation of being a Casanova. But my relationships were all short lived. The girls who dated me sensed my madness and couldn't put up with me. There was an obsessiveness in me that scared them. Every girl that I went out with became the great love of my life, even though (on looking back) I had so little in common with most of them.

When did my madness fade? I can't put an exact date on it, but it was probably the end of my teenage years. I started to pull myself together when I was 18. By the time I was 20 I was normal, or at least as normal as any young man can be. It was an emotional setback when my parents separated, but moving to Germany and starting work when I was 22 gave me a purpose in life, something to focus on.

I can talk about it now. When I was a teenager I didn't consider myself unbalanced. I can only see it in retrospect.

Johnny McFarley didn't have a mother like mine. His mother, already dead before the film starts, was a religious fanatic who treated him badly. His father was emotionally cold, like my own father. Johnny's madness made him a killer. I was spared.