*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Duvall (Hub) and Caine (Garth) are at their best. Osment (Walter) shows he is not a just a wunderkind but a true actor. The three together are just magic. Sedgwick is delightfully horrid. Good guys, bad guys, heroes, love, action and adventure - this movie has it all.
It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you cheer. It will make you think. The plot is believable and the characters are believable. Best of all, you will walk away feeling good about the world and people. What more can you ask for in a movie?
The following is a quote from the movie and the reason I marked "spoilers". Hub is talking to Walter, giving him a small portion of the speech he gives to every young man on the brink of adulthood. If this is not one of the most true and precious lessons one can impart, I don't know what is.
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."