Hellion also known as Retribution is a slight tale from writer and director Kat Candler which has slow, unrushed placing.

The film chronicles a family on the edge of destruction in rural Southeast Texas. Jacob Wilson (Josh Wiggins) likes heavy metal and loves motocross biking. He and his mates also get into vandalism and arson. Unfortunately for them, for every wrong move they make the police are immediately on to them.

His father Hollis (Aaron Paul) is also broken. He his grieving over the loss of his wife, drinks too much and not spending enough time to look after his two children, their house is squalid. Hollis was a one time local baseball star. His actions also brings him to the attention of the police. The behaviour of both puts the younger son Wes at risk and into the hands of the child protection services who have him fostered out to his aunt Pam (Juliette Lewis.)

Things take a turn for the worse when Jacob and his gang go to the aunt's house to visit Wes.

The film has naturalistic performances from the child actors which is the big plus for the film. Everything is low key, fatalistic even. The only thing sunny here is the weather. The pacing is uneven as the film is a slow burner. There is too much contrivances, the police seem to be always there when there is trouble which is hard to swallow.

There is irony to see Lewis being terrorised at the end of the movie from a gang of kids, after all she did her share of terrorising twenty years ago in films like Natural Born Killers.

HELLION (2014) ** 1/2 Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Josh Wiggins, Deke Garner, Dalton Sutton, Camron Owens, Dylan Cole, Jonny Mars. Well-acted domestic drama about a family fumbling through their grief over the sudden loss of the mother with her husband (Paul, low-key yet very affective) drinking his pains away and their sons (Wiggins, a natural and equally affective turn, who reminds me of a young Kevin Bacon, and Garner),the eldest the titular end result. Lewis is equally low-key as the concerned aunt. While filmmaker Kat Candler elicits fine work from her actors the script leaves much to be desired and more fleshed out. While there are so many outlets for the characters to explore each road feels abandoned.

This sad and bittersweet tale of a Father and his two Sons - one innocent, the other a "hellion" - has its share of emotional moments but is too intense in parts and dramatic and depressing. Cinematically - the acting, the directing, the editing, etc. - is all well done, and the story really has the viewer rooting that everything works out in the end. But a plot twist steers it into a disappointing conclusion. This is not a bad movie, just not a cheerful one. The worst part of this decent movie is that the part is not much a stretch for actor Aaron Paul. I was looking forward to seeing Paul play something other than a substance abusing, irresponsible, angry yet tearful Jesse Pinkman character of "Breaking Bad", but in this movie he plays a substance abusing, irresponsible, angry yet tearful Hollis Wilson - Paul with a heavy beard and slight southern drawl.