The Best Thief in the World may not have been filmed to some peoples liking, but its showed a small aspect of what city life is like for a family with very little money. Izzy may have been a strange kid, but people get "messed up" when they're in situations similar to that. That movie truly showed us how hard that life can be, and that New York City isn't always "glamorous."
--And the girl who played Amy zaidman was a fantastic little actress!
It's quite ironic that the huge pre-war apartment they lived in would have cost a bundle in some other part of town! In fact, all the apartments that crazy bored kid invaded were huge by NY standards.
Wasn't the mother a school teacher? School teachers in NY state are paid rather well, I know one who teaches grade school, this person makes $85,000 a year. There was no excuse for her to be living in that part of town.
Had Izzy's mother enrolled him in some after school programs, rather than simply expecting him to change after her lame empty 'lectures', perhaps Izzy would have actually done something constructive with his road-to-nowhere life. Was he actually smart? I didn't see any sparks of brilliance. He had no interests, no motivation. If you consider breaking into apartments and setting a fire, achievements, I guess he was as smart as Einstein!
If Izzy was so smart as his mom insisted, why was it he couldn't simply amuse himself like her two other neglected children were able to? Read a book, play some sports, do something. The other children seemed well behaved despite minimal almost non-existent parenting.
If Izzy thought his actions would garner attention from his mother, they didn't. After Izzy was arrested, that was the mother's chance to finally get serious about her troubled son, instead she continued her unmotivated life....sitting around drinking and gossiping with her friend, she was simply not there for her kids. If anyone shouldn't have become a mother, it was this character.
She was off for the Summer, where the heck was she while Izzy was trashing apartments? I laughed each time she asked him where he was. Was she serious? Did she really care? If she did, he wouldn't have been running amok to begin with. She needed to be his mom, not his friend.