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everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A Brilliant Conflict

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

I saw this on TV when I was about nine. I wasn't allowed to watch The Terminator when I was that age so all I knew Linda Hamilton from was Beauty and the Beast (This was before T2). It's kind of my archetype for what I think of as an 80's Disease of the Week TV movie and it was pretty effective. I think if I watched it now it would be a good indicator of how perceptions of the disease have changed. The moment that really got to me as a child was when the grandfather (I think it was Ned Beatty) was building a coffin in the garage while the kid was still alive. It was hard as nine year old to be confronted with my own mortality.

This is a very sad movie about a family dealing with a vicious killer. It is even sadder when the victim is a child. Ben struggles with this disease along with struggling to maintain his human dignity. Ben finally comes to grips with condition. It is hard to see his body deteriorate. This is sad documentation of the tragedy of AIDS. This cruel killer does not care who its victim is or how old. This is a good film that shows the strength of the human spirit during such extreme tragedy.Spoiler. alert: One high point was is 9th birthday when Ben was surrounded by friends and family who loved himThe saddest part ,in which I will never forget, was when Ben was in his mother's lap and his body violently jolted forward struggling to maintain life at the precise moment his heart stopped beating. Ben took in one last gasping breath and died in his mother's arms. As she held the lifeless body of her son she told him that she loved him.

I saw this movie many times as a child, my mom had recorded it on TV. It is about a family with 3 children, all boys with hemophilia. The oldest gets AIDS from the medicine he takes to help his blood clot. Back before 1985, the medicine was derived from pooled human blood, unscreened for diseases like HIV or HepC. Imagine my surprise to deliver my first child in 2002 and find him diagnosed with hemophilia, which wasn't inherited from my parents. This movie was all the information I had about hemophilia and it was so sad. Luckily, my son's life is nothing like that of the Ben in the movie. Yet, it is a good reminder of the pain the hemophilia community endured because of poor medical treatment. I'd like to find a way to get a copy of this movie.

Children dying ... Hollywood has produced tearjerkers, depressing and uplifting versions of the story, naive ones, and this movie contains a bit of all of that. But I'm not saying this in a negative way ... the movie tries to do its best to tell the story in 90 minutes, and there will be few who don't feel coming up a tear or two while watching. It's definitely a "Hollywood TV movie", and it does have the look and feel of one. It's also a movie from the 80's, and that starts showing. But the message remains a powerful one : kids die too, and saying goodbye is painful. Aids can kill, and still scares people away. Force can be found in the medical world, in religion, and most importantly in one's own family.