'PURE' HAS THE POWER TO SCARE STRAIGHT

If you know any actual or potential heroin addicts, or someone
perhaps thinking about just trying it, take them to see "Pure,"
director Gillies MacKinnon's relentlessly harrowing drama of a
10-year-old London boy's effort to keep his brother, himself and his
addicted mother alive.

The harrowing business starts with the first scene, in which the kid
(played to perfection by Harry Eden) innocently brings Mom (Molly
Parker) her breakfast-in-bed medicine: a lovin' spoonful of warm
heroin in a syringe. It gets worse from there, with the family's
constant invasion by pushers, police and needy neighbors. Our little
hero's only reliable friend seems to be Keira Knightley (who is
everywhere these days), and she's not only an addict but pregnant.

It is a gritty slice of lower-class British life, indeed, and the
performances are uniformly fine -- more so for being restrained in
the face of the unrestrained realism of the script. Toward the end,
when the boy is asked not only to survive on the street but to set up
a major drug bust, one thinks this might all be a little too much
pressure on the lad.

For those who like their social commentary S&M rough and
melodramatic, this is a powerfully full dose -- bordering on an
overdose -- of the very "Pure" stuff.

"Pure," in the Three Rivers Film Festival, is at the Regent Square at
9:30 p.m. tomorrow and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday.