They strip to their underwear, discarding leeches as they go, until only one remains… and it’s in Gordie’s pants. It’s all fun and games until someone spots a leech on Vern’s neck (Jerry O’Connell) and the boys rush to safety. First is their encounter with leeches as they mess around in a swamp-like pool in the forest. Two incidents in particular are representative of their transition into adulthood and the fears associated with it. They don’t check when the trains are coming and almost get flattened. None of them bring any food for the two-day trek. Along the way their youthful ignorance is hilariously exposed. They escape the boundaries of their safe, stable lives in Castle Rock and head into the wild, ready for a confrontation with death. The boys’ coming-of-age is symbolised by the journey they go on to find the dead body of Ray Brower. That bizarre balance is summed up most succinctly in one exchange where Teddy asks the other boys, “Have you been watching the Mickey Mouse club lately? I think Annette’s tits are getting bigger.” The rest of the time they talk what adult Gordie calls, “the kind of talk that seems important until you discover girls” arguing about whether Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman or how great it would be to eat cherry-flavoured Pez for the rest of your life. Half the time they’re grappling with the life-changing questions mentioned above: questions of life and death, whether your parents love you, what career you’re going to pursue. This duality is clear in every exchange between them.
The film finds the boys at a crossroads in their lives, where the safety and stability of childhood meet the unpredictable possibilities and realities of adult life. He either wants to please his dad, who wanted him to play football like Denny, or stay in his friendship group, even if that means ending up in shop class. Gordie himself has dreams of becoming a writer, but he’s more desperate to be liked than pursue that career. In their brief appearances Gordie’s parents sleepwalk through their day, haunted by grief. Likewise, Gordie and his parents have suffered the hammer blow of his brother Denny’s death, but it’s clearly something none of them have processed fully.
As he confesses to Gordie in one of the film’s most touching moments, he fears that he’s “never going to get out of this town.” Yet as he prepares to begin at a new school his aspirations to make more of himself come into conflict with his family’s poverty and the prejudice against them. He may have been pre-judged by other kids and teachers, and marked out for failure accordingly, but he could survive. Before then, Chris could survive within his semi-criminal family. When we join them, the friends are about to begin junior high, a new environment that forces them to acknowledge the reality of their lives.
#Body of lies movie summary full
But they are shielded from the full force of these traumas by virtue of their youth and naivety. Gordie (Wil Wheaton) is still coming to terms with a recent family tragedy, Teddy’s (Corey Feldman) dad is mentally scarred from his service in World War Two, and Chris’ (River Phoenix) family are just bad news. We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we going.” Their childhood may have been stable, but these boys have hardly led a charmed life. As the adult version of Gordie (Richard Dreyfuss) explains in his voiceover, “Everything was there and around us. It’s the height of summer and things couldn’t be more idyllic or peaceful for the four best friends at the heart of the film. Stand by Me begins in the quaint rural town of Castle Rock, Americana personified.
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