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Sure enough, their next job – a simple delivery of some stolen wheels from point A to point B – goes awry after Anthony convinces Hakeem to phone a store clerk they met the previous day, and instigates an impromptu joyride that ends in tragedy.

One of the wonders of the script is that it never telegraphs which way things are going to roll; three-quarters of the way into the film’s 102 minutes, you could easily argue that things are going to slide into some kind of bloodbath, or that it’s all an innocent mix-up and the boys will be back in Madame Tessier’s history class the next day.

It’s helped by the fact that the two young Toronto actors are similarly hard to pin down; Anthony is the cockier of the two, but each alternates between dangerous attitude and childhood naiveté. Half the time they seem like kids playing at being players. (Watch Hakeem as he inhales the smell of a pile of ill-gotten 20-dollar bills; the look on his face says he’s just learned they don’t smell like much.)

In a weird coincidence, the boys’ supervisor at the carwash is played by Théodore Pellerin, who stars in another Canadian new release this week called Never Steady, Never Still. In another coincidence, neither film will attract nearly the audience it deserves. It’s a shame, because these two very different movies represent bold new visions in Canadian cinema. They’re our stories; we should watch them.