"Where The Day Takes You" is about the homeless youth who come from all over the country to escape their dysfunctional families to live on the streets of Hollywood.It is here that this youth form surrogate families with other homeless youth.

This film chronicles one such family of homeless youth headed by King who is the father figure.A violent confrontation with another homeless leader turns for the worse and King finds himself desperately trying to keep his family together while avoiding the law.

The movie is surprisingly honest about dangers of living on the street and yet portrays the real sense of community that this homeless youth shares with each other.

My only issue with this film was perhaps the Melissa Etheridge music which distracted me.It got more tolerable with repeated viewings of this film but to be fair I am not much of a Melissa Etheridge fan.

If you like movies about Hollywood or films featuring young attractive actors playing disaffected youth then I would suggest this film.

Dermott Mulroney gives a very commanding and outstanding performance as King, a tough, street smart, ask-for-no-favors recent parolee who lives on the mean streets in and around Hollywood Boulevard; he relates his arduous everyday experiences to prison psychologist Lara San Giacomo and basically acts as a wise, protective father figure to a ragtag bunch of hapless, homeless, penniless runaway youths trying to eke out a meager existence in the City of Angels.

An incisive, absorbing, down and dirty look at the unceasingly grim, tense, often distressfully uncertain day-to-day lifestyle of destitute, on their own abandoned derelict kids and the bleak drug and violence-infested hellhole they exist in, "Where the Day Takes You" manages for the most part to be appropriately harsh and hard-hitting, rarely pleasant or overly cloying. In fact, this occasionally potent and always enthralling film has a raw, squalid, rough-edged semi-verite feel to it, thanks to Mark Rocco's firm, keen, tough-minded direction and King Baggot's crisp, fluid, starkly lit cinematography (a cruelly eagle-eyed Steadicam is put to sporadic and quite effective use). While Mulroney clearly dominates the picture with his sterling, supremely charismatic portrayal of King, the other cast members who play equally on the skids adolescents are just as fine: Lara Flynn Boyle as a guileless new runaway who bolted away from home because her brother was sexually abusing her, Sean Astin as a pathetic, doomed heroin addict (the scene where Astin vomits all over himself is very powerful and his ultimate fate is unforgettably chilling and disturbing),Balthazar Getty as a sullen male hustler, Will Smith as a brash crippled smartaleck, James LeGros as King's loyal best friend, Peter Dobson as a brutal punk hood, and, yes, even tacky, tubby tabloid TV show host Rikki Lake as a peevish, abrasive fat chick are all superb. Other strong thespic contributions are turned in by Adam Baldwin and Rachel Ticotin as cops, a disgustingly on-target Kyle MacLachen as an odious, deceitfully "sympathetic" drug dealer, Leo Rossi as Astin's ineffectual father, Stephen Tobolowsky as a wimpy, shyly courteous gay client who uses Getty for titillation, Alyssa Milano as an underaged prostitute, Robert Knepper as a conceited rock singer, and an unbilled Christian Slater as an interviewer at a drug rehabilitation clinic. Downbeat and depressing for sure, but still a real poignant powerhouse movie just the same.

In Los Angeles, the gang of teenagers leaded by King (Dermot Mulroney) survives on the streets begging, prostituting and stealing money. Among King's best friends are Little J (Balthazar Getty),who is a gay prostitute; Greg (Sean Astin),who is drug addicted capable of stealing to buy drugs with the dealer Ted (Kyle MacLachlan); and the paralytic Manny (Will Smith). When the newcomer and runaway from Chicago Heather (Lara Flynn Boyle) meets King, they fall in love for each other. But when Little J kills Tommy Ray to protect King, he is falsely accused of murder and chased by the police, with tragic consequences.

"Where the Day Takes You" approaches an important and delicate theme, the life of teenagers on the streets, but unfortunately following the glamour and asepsis of Hollywood movies. A couple of weeks ago, I saw the German movie "Engel & Joe", which has a similar storyline, but in a very realistic view and with a beautiful non-commercial final message of hope and peace. In "Where the Day Takes You", actors and actresses are handsome and beautiful, there is no message in the end, and it is almost a kind of incentive for teenagers with problem with their families to run away home, provided they do not use smack or buy a gun. The soundtrack with wonderful songs of Melissa Etheridge is excellent. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Lei de Cada Dia" ("The Law of Each Day")