This is pretty impressive stuff, actually, intertextual without being emptily post-modern, kinetical at the same time that it’s being deeply interrogative, and even critical. It’s also really well structured and executed. The violence is post-Peckinpah, and suggests how much further we can go and have gone with those original methods. Tremendous, if you like this kind of thing. (And don’t we all, in our unguarded or guilty moments, dig futurist excess?) What superbly calculated, steadily mounting action sequences!
But does it come down to this? The kid in question is twelve years old. At least at the time of production. We’re in Noah Baumbach territory here. Actors are also people, and they’re especially vulnerable people when they’re very young. Saying and doing things like this child has to say and do has an effect, for which we will end up being responsible. (Is it any different with the carrying on of the romantic leads? I guess they’re in their twenties, but even old people are vulnerable and victimizable.) The things people will allow in order to get their kids in movies!