Jennifer Hudson in The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (Lionsgate)

It’s clear from the opening scenes that Mister (Skylan Brooks) is the kind of kid most would prefer to simply write off as a “troubled youth.” The tough-talking, hardened African-American teen flunks out of the eighth grade and mouths off to the English teacher who attempts to give him some well-meaning, if harsh, advice. The reasons for his shell-like exterior soon become clear as he returns to the Brooklyn housing project he calls home: he witnesses the arrest of a neighbor (more with exasperation than surprise), unsuccessfully attempts to buy food with a defunct welfare card, and later watches his own mother get arrested, resulting in his virtual abandonment for the rest of the summer.

As Gloria, Mister’s drug addled, prostitute mother, Jennifer Hudson is both oddly sensual and convincingly frustrating, a young single parent stumbling uncertainly through life. After her exit, the police try to locate Mister to send him to a group home, and dodging them becomes his mission for the remainder of the film. Accompanying Mister through his ordeal is Pete (Ethan Dizon), a young Korean boy Gloria seems to have taken in and whose gentle naiveté makes him the perfect foil to the rougher Mister. It’s never made explicitly clear what Pete’s situation is, but several moments hint that the wide-eyed, sweetly inquisitive child has faced a life far worse even than Mister’s.

Mister and Pete occupies a world that many viewers will know from HBO’s The Wire. Indeed, it’s mentioned that both Mister’s and Pete’s mothers have worked for swaggering crime lord Kris (Anthony Mackie), whose place in the project’s hierarchy is similar to that of an Omar Little or Stringer Bell. However, this film’s focus is upon those who suffer the collateral damage, those who fall between the cracks, and emphasizes the depressingly mundane over the shockingly glamorous. Shots of the foods that Mister and Pete subsist on—bread and jelly, ketchup and beans—or a scene of Pete showering with dishwasher soap paint a far more dismal and authentic portrait than any scenes of drive by shootings or police brutality could.

Though there’s occasional help from Alice (Jordin Sparks), a caring 20-something friend of Mister’s who used to live in his building, the two boys are alone, and the only overarching purpose to their lives is an upcoming open audition for a Hollywood movie that film buff and wannabe actor Mister has pinned all his dreams on (he gives up any hope that his mother will come back for him all too quickly).

In its realistic, unromanticized depiction of lower-class inner city life, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete invites obvious comparison to Lee Daniels’s 2009 film Precious. Like Precious, Mister and Pete rarely lets up on its young characters—even the smallest success is followed by heart-wrenching cruelty. Yet where Daniel’s film was a grim and plodding, often heavy-handed, work that constantly inflicted pain upon its morose protagonist, Mister and Pete is dynamic and energetic, a film that permits its characters far more agency. These are children living through hell but who can’t stop—won’t stop—to acknowledge it. In one memorable scene in which the two boys manage to break into an apartment to steal food, Pete stumbles across a handgun, which he accidentally discharges. Mister sternly admonishes the kid to “shake it off,” and the boys are soon back to the task at hand. Neither Pete nor the viewer is permitted the luxury of reacting; to stop moving, to wallow, is to die.

Both Brooks and Dizon deliver performances that are occasionally unpolished but always ring true, and though Dizon’s role softens the gritty tone considerably, he is never cloying. While there are moments that detract (it’s never quite apparent what Alice’s role in Mister’s life is meant to be, and the film wraps up a shade too fast), this is a powerful testament to the indomitable human spirit.