Irish novelist and playwright Brendan Behan, a self-described "drinker with a writing problem," finally succumbed to the bottle at 41, leaving behind a knotty personal history and a healthy reputation for raucous behavior. There's only the faintest connection between the real Behan and the righteous young man depicted in Borstal Boy, a sentimental coming-of-age story that views the past through a sweetly nostalgic lens, softening and massaging an undoubtedly thornier truth. Based on Behan's 1958 memoir, the film opens in Liverpool in the early '40s, when the 16-year-old Behan, a doggedly fierce supporter of the Irish Republican Army, tries unsuccessfully to sneak past customs with sticks of dynamite strapped to his legs. Played with passion and a credible working-class brogue by American actor Shawn Hatosy, Behan remains defiant before an English court, but legally, the judge can only sentence him to a four-year stay at a borstal, a rough-and-tumble reform school for juvenile boys. Headed by a warden (Michael York) who actually takes the "reform" part seriously, the borstal runs on an honor system that affords the students an unusual degree of trust and respect. Though he considers himself a P.O.W. and is therefore required to attempt escape, Behan begins to warm to his new environment and takes an early interest in literature, particularly the works of fellow rebel and jailbird Oscar Wilde. His rite of passage also includes a sexually ambiguous friendship with an openly gay Naval cadet (Danny Dyer) and an infatuation with the warden's daughter (Eva Birthistle), a painter who recognizes and encourages his talent. Like a lot of films about writers, Borstal Boy doesn't offer many telling insights into the creative mind, but simply gooses an otherwise ordinary story with the author's notoriety. In his unalloyed compassion for his subject, director Peter Sheridan—brother of gifted writer-director Jim Sheridan, who made My Left Foot and In The Name Of The Father—disingenuously suggests that the borstal years cured Behan of his aggression, when in reality, he shot a police officer shortly after returning to Dublin. This telling distortion, one of several, rounds the edges off an already pat melodrama, so much so that it's a wonder Sheridan bothered to adapt Behan's story in the first place. But taken on its own inauspicious terms, Borstal Boy shows an unusual degree of generosity toward all its characters, and its tenderness yields some affecting moments, even if they don't ring entirely true.