When Hollywood makes a movie about tweens, it is invariably either an inane comedy or adventure or a little morality play that is wrapped around a coming-of-age life lesson. Often aimed at girls, those pictures make the kids their audience and contain little of interest to those even a few years older than the 12-year-olds at the center of the story.

“12 and Holding” isn’t a Hollywood movie. Instead, it’s a very well-made independent film that raises some thorny issues about kids today, their problems and how they cope with them. But it does so with some humor along with the intense drama that ties together the three story lines in Anthony Cipriano’s script.

Rudy and Jacob Carges (both played by Conor Donovan) are twin brothers who couldn’t be more different. Rudy is an aggressive young athletic-type. Jacob, born with a reddish birthmark that covers most of the left side of his face, is withdrawn, wears a hockey mask and shies away from any kind of physical activity.

Their best friends are Malee Chung (Zoe Weizenbaum), a cute girl who has her first period as the film opens, and the seriously overweight Leonard Fisher (Jesse Camacho). When they’re not at school, the quartet spend time in a tree house in a wooded area owned by the twins’ father, using it as a fortress against a pair of neighborhood bullies.

When the bullies decide they’re going to destroy the tree house, things go seriously wrong. The twins learn of the plan, and Rudy wants to protect the tree house. Jacob, of course, declines to sneak out in the night to confront the bullies. But Rudy and Leonard climb up, carrying a baseball bat, ready to do battle.

But the bullies aren’t going to fight. They’ve brought beer-bottle Molotov cocktails and set the tree house on fire. Leonard barely escapes from the inferno and winds up in the hospital. Rudy isn’t so lucky — he’s killed, sending the family into a downward spiral.

Leonard’s trauma causes him to lose his senses of taste and smell. He stops eating, much to the chagrin of his very overweight mother (Marcia DeBonis). Then at the urging of his physical education teacher, Leonard starts working out and getting in shape. That sets the kid on a collision course with his mom.

Malee, a lonely little girl, handles her trauma in a far different fashion. The daughter of a therapist (Annabella Sciorra), she meets construction worker Gus Maitland (Jeremy Renner) waiting outside her mom’s office. A nice, but deeply troubled former firefighter, he innocently befriends the girl. But she thinks she’s in love with an older man.

As for Jacob, he has to deal with his parents, who fall into lethargic grief, and his anger at those who killed his brother. He begins visiting the bullies in juvenile prison, terrorizing them as best he can, while his home life gets steadily worse, even as his parents recover.

Director Michael Cuesta skillfully weaves the three kids’ stories together, cutting back and forth between them in a manner that keeps the film moving steadily forward. And he manages the difficult balance of seeing the humor in some of the kids’ behavior without losing dramatic tension.

Of course, that wouldn’t be possible without very strong performances from the young actors, all of whom are excellent in complicated, multifaceted roles that ask them to go beyond the usual cardboard cutouts and play real people with real problems.

Weizenbaum is particularly convincing as Malee, who looks to her budding sexuality to solve her problems. Sciorra is a near perfect counterpoint to her as her distant, intellectual mother, and Renner deftly handles the film’s most delicate role.

The question “12 and Holding” asks is the age-old query of parents: Do you know what your children are doing?

The answer Cuesta, writer Cipriano and the young trio of stars provide is a very straightforward, knowing “No.”

That’s what sets “12 and Holding” apart from standard films about kids and it’s why it is such a powerful, engrossing picture.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or at kwolgamott@journalstar.com.