In the weeks leading up to September 11, Derrick (Al Thompson) and best bud Tico (Kareem Savinon) ride out daily to their minimum wage, tourist trap jobs at the Statue of Liberty. In opposites attract mode, college hopeful Derrick is both working on his GED while paying child support for his twins while Tico, even on the best of days lackadaisical, lives responsibility-free and depends on his friend's wake-up call every morning. In opening scenes with the two friends, Thompson and Savinon's organic energies resonating in perfect pitch, Chaiken demonstrates a great ease of direction, mixing a familiarity with an oft misrepresented urban landscape that is rapidly losing ground as exotic to endangered. Chaiken's falter point, however, shares space with the film's turning point, as if the image of the Twin Towers' collapse, seen here binocular-lensed, likewise signals a collapse of the film's narrative solidity.

After several jobless months, the pair turn to drug dealing and insurance scam to make up money for lost time. Prosaic wanderings and ponderings, beautifully shot in high-def by lenser Eliot Rockett, bewilder this reprieve, although it's clearly only a matter of time before the two are either busted or guilted out of the lifestyle by their consciences. Ultimately, to the army one, to prison the other, Chaiken draws Derrick and Tico melodramatically back together to make her not-so-delicate statement about the emotional carnage of the Iraq War, a statement that also inadvertently makes light of, and renders far palatable to military service, a life of crime.

Strangely, though, while Chaiken is more than willing to explore outrage through dialogue, or the lack thereof, and through one verite scene of a veterans' meeting, she botches a pass at subtlety and ends up treating her heavy subjects--those of war, race and coming of age--with political rather than personal kid gloves. The big issues are already too well known. It's the small issues, the specifics that really hit an honest chord, the small moments which are forgotten that shout out new ideas in an issue's vernacular, and this Chaiken only hits in the film's very last scene.

As Liberty Kid wraps itself into its tragic cookie cutter indie drama ending, the body of impression is that Chaiken, buoyed by Thompson's on the mark craft, has hit upon an emotional moment, unencumbered by sentimentality, that truly mines the uncertainty of the post disaster mindset. She presents, quite lucidly, the desire to go home again, to feel once more the innocence of both individual and societal security. Yet, despite this last minute redemption, Liberty Kid is simply too expected and unintentionally shallow, the emotional found object that remains generic because Chaiken has, without the least meaning to, not bothered to make a film with devil's detail.

Liberty Kid plays 7:05 PM, Wed, Apr 16 and 1:30 PM Fri, Apr 18 at the Landmark Midtown. Purchase tickets.