Everyone seems to have an opinion about Shia LaBeouf, the child-star turned Transformers/Crystal Skull actor turned Hollywood bad boy. But regardless of what you think you think, anyone who checks out Honey Boy, a revealing and emotionally turbulent tell-all written by and starring LaBeouf, will come out wanting to reach through the screen and deliver a big Shia hug.

A painstakingly unfiltered take on Shia’s own experience with child stardom and the abuse he underwent at the hands of his father, Honey Boy sees LaBeouf bear his soul. He rips out his heart Kali Ma-style and shows us each little scar rippling across it. I’m not one who often uses the descriptor “brave” to commend a film but the shoe fits here perfectly. This is a brave movie. One that very clearly was a painful and soul-cleansing endeavor on behalf of its creator, made especially complicated by LaBeouf’s (excellent) performance as his own father.

It is here that Honey Boy transcends what could have been a woe-is-me autobiography about manipulation and abuse and digs deeper into the pathos of its creator’s wilted family tree. LaBeouf seeks not only to understand but to forgive his father, toiling with his pain in a way that attempts to explore and understand his family’s genealogical habits of despair and alcoholism and to provide a kind of absolution from a laundry list of misdeeds.

Severed into two distinct portions of LaBeouf’s life, Honey Boy has both Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges play “Otis”, a pseudonym for Shia, at ages 12 and 22 respectively. As a young kid cutting his teeth in the industry, Otis’ biggest obstacle is his unstable father James (played by LaBeouf), who also serves as his professional handler. On Otis’ payroll, James is anything but professional and far from resembling a father figure. He may be 4-years clean but he’s a man haunted by his own failure, lashing out at his progeny, tormenting him in clear and demonstrable ways.

His abuse manifests in physical violence, emotional put-downs, and cigarette burns, all things that haunt the older Otis, who rages and lashes out. In this confession of substance abuse and anger management issues, LaBeouf further excises his own soul for us to observe, pick apart, and understand. Serving court-mandated rehabilitation, the 22-year old superstar must come to terms with the PTSD inflicted by his father, processing the devastation that comes with a daddy who’s constantly making fun of your penis size.

We’re shown the world-skewing effects of his father’s upbringing in young Otis’ interactions with the outside world. How he lies to protect his father and comes to understand and exploit their unusual dynamic as employer and employee. With a hefty paycheck, he learns that nothing is free. Especially not parental love. To Otis, life is an exchange economy. One often built on lies. He even pays his neighbor (FKA Twigs), who is also definitely a prostitute, just for showing him a twinkle of affection. Their interactions are another instance of Honey Boy zigging where it could have zagged, presenting heartfelt and complicated relationships that don’t fit easily in a box.

As a dramatic affair, Honey Boy reaches many a breathtaking emotional climax, delivering some of the most heartrending and sincerely human beats of the year. The performances are frequently outstanding with the young Jupe giving one of the very best child performances of 2019 with LaBeouf giving some of the best work of his career, offering a complex and riveting turn as his broken father. He should deservingly be in any award’s conversation talks. That there really isn’t anything quite like Honey Boy speaks to both its originality and its power and even if some of the older Otis therapy sessions don’t prove quite as compelling as the young Otis drama, Honey Boy weaves the two storylines together into its formidable thesis on forgiveness.

Drawing from traumatic personal experience, Honey Boy serves as both a creator’s exercise in forgiveness and self-healing and a meta cinematic experience with real dramatic weight. “The script grew out of a specific moment in my life,” LaBeouf says of his process. “It’s not something I ever thought I would do, wanted to do or needed to do. But I was forced to confront my past and writing was an important part of my therapy.” Director Alma Har’el takes LaBeouf’s soul-bearing script and performance and wields the pain and trauma to yield something beautiful, musical, and often touching.

CONCLUSION: The Shia LaBeouf renaissance continues with the formidable autobiography ‘Honey Boy’ wherein LaBeouf devastatingly plays his own abusive father in this soul-searching drama about growing up and learning to forgive.