A Chance Crossing of Paths in Downbeat ‘Parallel Sons’

John C. Young’s “Parallel Sons” has much that is impressive, but is such a downer that it leaves you wondering whether its overwhelmingly tragic climax is fully earned or overly predetermined. On the other hand, what happens in the unfolding of its story is all too credible, even if its telling lacks that all-crucial quality of unrelenting inevitability.

Gabriel Mick’s Seth and Laurence Mason’s Knowledge Johnson are highly engaging individuals from vastly different worlds. Seth is a tall, rangy 20-year-old living in a small, isolated Adirondacks town where, he observes, “everybody’s interchangeable.”

Nobody could say that about Seth, who has long blond dreadlocks and has turned his farmhouse bedroom into a shrine to African American culture. While the locals accept Seth, who after all is a native, they would surely have trouble dealing with his homosexuality, which he has yet to come to terms with himself.

Seth, who apparently hasn’t been anywhere, understandably wants out and not just because of his sexual orientation. His widowed father (Graham Alex Johnson), proprietor of the local gun shop, feels so overtaxed he’s not about to sign a financial agreement that would allow Seth to attend NYU as an art major. Besides, the father sees nothing wrong with a nearby college and considers an art major too impractical anyway.

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Consequently, Seth is a far from happy guy when he crosses paths with Knowledge, a wounded escapee from some kind of minimum-security prison. We never really learn why Knowledge is in prison, but we do know that he’s haunted by the fact that his little brother shot himself fatally with his gun. In any event, Seth’s just the person to hide Knowledge in the family cabin and nurse him back to health.

The way in which trust, friendship and, finally, mutual attraction grow between these two bright, free-thinking young men is tender and amusing, but of course there’s an underlying tension about their ultimate fate in an environment that grows increasingly dangerous the longer they remain in it.

In the meantime, they’re not so different despite the divergence of their worlds and beyond their shared sexual orientation. Knowledge is a reflective young man from Brooklyn whose dream is to become a paramedic. The film’s lightest moment occurs when, during the day when no one’s around, Knowledge sneaks into the farmhouse and comes upon Seth’s bedroom, confounding him completely.

Young elicits completely natural portrayals from Mick and Mason in the well-written parts he has created for them, and they are most impressive young actors. “Parallel Sons” is finally not so much a love story or a gay drama as it is, intentionally or not, an anti-gun protest. Even if you agree wholeheartedly in its sentiments, you have to wish the message were contained within the movie instead of overwhelming it.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some sex, some strong language and considerable violence and is therefore inappropriate for children.

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‘Parallel Sons’

Gabriel Mick: Seth

Laurence Mason: Knowledge

Graham Alex Johnson: Mick’s father

Julia Weldon: Sally, Seth’s sister

A Greycat Films release in association with Black Brook Films. Writer-director John G. Young. Producers James Spione and Nancy Larsen. Executive producer James D. Brubacker. Cinematographer Matthew M. Howe. Editor Young, Spione. Costumes Leonardo Iturregui. Music Emile Menasche. Production designer Cindi Sfinas. Art director Joanne Berman. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Nuart through Wednesday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.