The Parts You Lose

Parents need to know that The Parts You Lose is a movie about a young deaf boy (Danny Murphy) whose life changes after he harbors a fleeing fugitive (Aaron Paul). Violence is mostly implied, with everything from a mass murder to parental abuse of a child taking place off-screen. Viewers see peripheral visuals connected with these events: police cars and officers, bruises on a child's face, etc. A character has a gun, but he never fires it; someone is presumably killed by police officers, yet we only hear gunfire and see police standing outside a house. The boy is a target for bullies at school, who call him names (including "retard"), throw snowballs at his bus, and routinely smear mucus in his hair (which causes an adult to advise the boy to hit his bully with a coin-filled thermos in a backpack). Language is infrequent but includes "s--t," "f--king," "dammit," and more. A bar is a frequent hangout; in one scene, a character drinks beer morosely alone there and then gets into a car accident. Authority figures are unpredictable: Some are kind and supportive, others are somewhere on the spectrum from disinterested to cruel. A father refuses to speak sign language to his son, denying that he's deaf; the boy's mother uses ASL to communicate, though, and he's taught in this language at school. The movie's overall tone is so dark and bleak that it's best for mature teens and adults.