by Tim Gordon
Can you ever hide from yourself?
Under immense pressure at home and struggling in school, a young man crosses paths with a young renegade who changes his perspective in the stylized drama, Young. Wild. Free.
Director Thembi Banks’ feature debut, written by Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier, dives into the chaos of teen love, bad choices, and the fragile hope that escape is possible — if only for a moment.
Brandon Huffman (Algee Smith) is a teenager carrying a weight far too big for his years. With his mother, Janice (Sanaa Lathan), battling substance abuse, he’s left to raise his younger siblings, hold the household together, and somehow graduate high school. He’s drifting, overwhelmed, and quietly losing hope for a way out of his day-to-day grind.
Everything shifts one night when Brandon heads to a corner store for snacks and ends up staring down the barrel of a gun. But the masked thief who holds him up isn’t a stranger — it’s Cassidy (Sierra Capri), the girl he’s been dreaming about from a distance. Their brief, electric moment sparks a bond that pulls him into her orbit and a whirlwind of freedom and chaos that feels more alive than anything he’s ever known.
Where Brandon is cautious, weighed down by responsibility, Cassidy is bold, wild, and intoxicating. She pushes him to break rules, take risks, and seize moments he never believed he could claim for himself. It’s dangerous — and exactly what he needs to feel like something more than a burdened big brother. But as his mother begins to piece her life back together and things start to look up, Brandon starts to realize that this romance might not be the answer he hoped for — and that Cassidy’s presence in his life might cost him more than he’s ready to lose.
Taylor and Rettenmaier’s setup is compelling, and Banks brings a raw, dreamlike energy to the story. But what starts with promise fizzles out as the script struggles to dig deeper. There’s a sense that this could have been a gritty, unexpected take on young love and survival, but it never quite pushes its characters beyond their surface-level wildness.
Algee Smith gives Brandon a quiet soulfulness that makes you root for him to find a way out. But it’s Sierra Capri who lights up the screen — her Cassidy is vibrant, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, the script never gives her the space she needs to show us why Cassidy is the way she is, or to make her feel like more than just a symbol of escape. It’s a missed opportunity that leaves the film feeling hollow where it should have hit hardest.
In the end, Young. Wild. Free. flirts with something real and raw but never quite grabs it. It’s a film about a kid desperate to break free — but like its main character, it just can’t find a way to rise above its circumstances.
Grade: C+
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