It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

(*James Dean quote*) - "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.""Forever Young" is something of a "mixed-bag" celebrity-documentary, in that it is either gonna please you to pieces or else piss you right off - Depending, of course, on your overall opinion of late actor, James Dean.This 90-minute presentation (of both colour and b&w images) completely glosses over Dean's decidedly quirky, emotionally-explosive character. In order to divert and compensate for this omission - It pays full attention to James' brief professional acting career in both the medium of television and in Hollywood feature films.Through 100s of vintage stills and archival footage (some images rarely seen before) - "Forever Young" pays respectful tribute to James Dean who (at the age of 24) died in a brutal car crash

Impressive documentary of 1950's Hollywood icon James Dean in both rare photos film and video clips seen for the first time since they were shown on TV and the movies almost 60 years ago. Dean who started his acting career doing Pepsi Cola commercials ended up becoming one of the top stars in Hollywood five years later only to get himself killed in a traffic accident on a lonely stretch of a California highway at dusk, at approximately 5:45 PM, on that fateful Friday afternoon of September 30, 1955.At the time of Dean's death the public were exposed to only one film that he stared in "East of Edan" with his next film "Rebel Without a Cause" slated to be released, in mid-October, just two weeks after he was killed. But as we see in this fascinating documentary Dean had already made a name for himself on both stage and TV with some three dozen roles that he cut his teeth and perfected his acting craft in. Holding his own against seasoned actors like John Carradine Rod Steiger Hume Cronyn and Robert Middleton Dean by the beginning of 1954 was ready to make the big time as well as big bucks in Hollywood. That's in famed Hollywood & Broadway director Elia Kazan casting him in the title role of the moody and ill tempered Cal Trusk in film version of John Steinbeck's best selling novel "East of Edan".It was in "East of Eden" that the movie going public finally got to see what an electrifying and talented actor James Dean really was. What the public didn't know was that one of the reasons that Dean was able to convey such explosive tension and almost maniacal intensity in his roles was that he was extremely near-sighted, his vision was 20/400, and had to squint, in him not being able to see as close as ten inches in front of his nose, to see or make out the actors and actresses that were in the scenes with him.After the success of "East of Edan" Dean was well on his way to movie immortality but his premature death at age 24 cut all that short; Or did it! In fact James Dean had become bigger in death then he ever was in life which is one of the many ironies and contradictions about him. And it's that his tragic death what makes Dean the legend that he is even more then any of the parts, on stage TV and in the movies, he played!One of the many ironies in Dean's life was that fellow actor Paul Newman tested for the part, which we see in a never before shown film clip, of Dean's brother and rival for his father affection Aron in his beak-out film "East of Edan" and lost out to Richaed Davalos for the role. As fate would have it the very next role that Dean was to play before his untimely death the part of boxer Rocky Graziano in "Somebody up There Likes Me" eventually went to Paul Newman! That like in James Dean's part as Cal Trusk in "East of Edan" became Newman's beak-out movie role. That eventually made him the major film star,in Newman taking the part which by then Dean was not available for, which James Dean was very probably descant to become!P.S Another ironic fact about James Dean is that on the day September 30, 1955 that he died he was exactly,in him being born on February 8, 1931, 9,000 days old!

"James Dean: Forever Young" is a good but not great documentary about one of the most enigmatic stars in Hollywood history. It's free of the usual talking heads (one British film about him in the early 1970's was promoted as the last one made when both Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo were still alive and available for interviews) and it focuses mostly on Dean himself via his surviving work on live TV shows and screen tests. It presents a sanitized version of his life, ignoring his sexuality almost completely (the real Dean was almost certainly Bisexual and his relationships with older men were probably quite a bit more than the innocent "mentoring" ones they're presented as here) and also leaving out his interest in horror films (as a teenager he played the Frankenstein monster in an amateur play, he hung out with Maila "Vampira" Nurmi of "Plan Nine from Outer Space" infamy, and the film in which he planned to make his debut as director, as well as starring, was an adaptation of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" he had asked his friend, screenwriter Bill Bast — a name unmentioned in this movie even though Bast published the first book ever written about Dean — to write for him). What was really most frustrating about this film was that it showed off the sheer extent of Dean's legacy — a LOT more of his acting survives than the three starring films we've known for over half a century — and at the same time offered it only in tantalizing clips. It's about time that whatever rights holders are involved got together for a COMPLETE (or nearly so) presentation of Dean's surviving TV work on DVD so Dean's fans can have a complete picture of his work and can see the performances that have been left to rot in vaults all these many years. James Dean did a lot more than just three big movies, and the tragedy of his early death only underscores the need for a complete and respectful presentation of ALL the work he actually DID leave behind.

If you're a James Dean fan and only really know him from the three films that brought him fame, you'll be interested in seeing how he kept busy before that big break in EAST OF EDEN ('55).As interesting as these early TV clips are, none of them are set up in a way that helps us follow what is going on. Seen out of context it's difficult to assess just how well Dean is doing in his various roles, but it does appear that he had already adopted all of the quirky mannerisms he displayed in his major films. His method acting is on full display in all of the '50s TV work he did, including episodes with Ronald Reagan and Geraldine Page. It would have been interesting to know why Louis Jourdan had little to do with him during their Broadway appearance in "The Immoralist." It's a fact that is quickly mentioned and then dropped by narrator Martin Sheen.His test with Paul Newman for EAST OF EDEN to see whether they could play brothers in the John Steinbeck drama is one of the more interesting highlights. And ironically, his willingness to appear with Gig Young in a short about driver safety shortly before Dean's death in an auto accident leaves an indelible impression.For fans of the actor, an interesting glimpse of his personality before and during the height of stardom, but not an incisive full-bodied portrait of the actor at work.