Most of us can't even begin to imagine what this girl, Amanda-Sue "Mandy" Bradley went through, but this movie follows the last three years of her tragic and crazy life working as a teenage stripper to survive, while under the thumb of her new adult boyfriend (more like pimp), Billie Canton.At the age of thirteen, Mandy is living in a low-class trailer park, and most of her neighbors, especially Mickey, are respectable and caring people nonetheless. Inside Mandy's trailer though is a clueless, self-centered mother who leaves Mandy with her stepfather, Harvey. Harvey is a disgusting, drunken redneck and also a pedophile who rapes Mandy repeatedly until she marries her boyfriend (still at the age of thirteen!) and he quickly leaves her to join the army, leaving her to realize that her parents have run off and left her behind. With no place left to go, Mandy ends up meeting Billie, who gives her powerful drugs and signs her up to work as an underage stripper. As her life goes on, her sanity diminishes until one day the unthinkable happens.Now, at the age of fifteen, Mandy is about to go on trial for murder, facing death by asphyxiation (chemical gas), and only her compassionate lawyer, Buddy, can try to help defend her case as he learns more about the abuse she suffered at the hands of those she trusted.Too Young to Die? is an incredibly sad movie, and an insight to the death penalty and justice system when it comes to children. Here in Canada there is no death penalty, the maximum sentence is life in prison, so watching this movie was very surprising to me, although it is almost twenty five years old so the laws have probably changed since the times when teenagers could be gassed to death (at least I hope so). The soundtrack was great, the acting was very good and it's a movie that everyone should watch at least once.

At the beginning of the movie, Amanda is being arrested for murder. Through flashbacks we learn of the circumstances, and the movie goes back and forth between the present and the past. Amanda tells her lawyer she didn't do it, but she is not very helpful in keeping herself out of prison--or possibly death row.Amanda was only 14 when her stepfather asked her to do something she didn't want to do, and when her mother blamed her, she soon felt her only option was to run away. Once she ended up broke and alone in another town, Billy came to her rescue with a job no 14-year-old should have. Soon Amanda needed rescuing again, and Mark, divorced with children, proved to be her knight in shining armor. But things did not improve for Amanda, and we know something terrible eventually happened.Juliette Lewis did a better than average job, showing a range of emotions and dimensions to the troubled Amanda character. I don't know that I saw the potential for the respected actor Brad Pitt became, but maybe there was something there.It's a real shame this was based on a true story. No teen should have to go through what Amanda did. Still, maybe showing the circumstances of her life will help others in her situation.

(Spoilers Included!!)This is not a "feature film", its one of those "movie of the week" that was done on a small budget to tell a compelling story.The story is a bad one that ends up worse. A very pretty young teen female, with a washed up middle aged mother who lives in a trailer environment, gets sexually abused by her "almost married for a year" husband. When the daughter tells her about the abuse and asks her mother to have this man leave, the mother makes the daughter feel at fault and does not ask the man to leave, but for HER to. Her life gets worse, no one -- and I strongly repeat -- no one cares to morally assist this girl. She then deals with more awful men and a bottom of the barrel life just trying to survive on what little sense she's got, until she is involved in murder.Now a personal note: I feel that when you kill someone, you have to pay the consequences. It DOES NOT matter what age you are. While it is sad that this teen, her life, and how she makes decisions fell the wrong way, she participated in murder. That being said, should she have gotten a death penalty in my view? In this case, no. Should she have gotten life in prison with out the possibility of parole? In this case..no. But that is the point, for us to search inside ourselves and understand what WAS best for this teen --in this case. There is no one ideal/one fit for everybody and everything. Jail and death are not the "end all beat all" of all crimes committed. A life was taken -- never lose sight on that, but why that life was taken is of importance and justice for that life being taken is also just as important.But this person's life was taken too. Although not physically dead..she was being killed for a long time which led her to believe that committing death on another was her only 'rational' option led on by another irrational human being. So what do you do? How do you handle this kind of criminal offense? What is best for her, society, justice to the dead? That is the question that we are still trying to answer.This film is as good as it gets for "TV". Don't expect more out of it. It does what it needs to do, provoke thought and conversation. Juliette Lewis and Brad Pitt do a fine job, it's worth a peek.

"Too Young to Die" tells of an attractive young woman of low intelligence who's raised by a degenerate mother in a low class environment and sexually abused by men resulting in tragedy. This unfortunate flick has a story of some social significance but fails to bring it to the screen with the bitter reality, heart and compassion is deserves. Lewis and Pitt offer good performances but the film suffers from melodrama, stereotypical clichés, poor directing, and a mediocre screen play with an obvious made-for-tv presentation. Recommended only for those interested in the early work of Lewis and Pitt.