Rating: B+
Director: D.C. Hamilton
Star: Gino Anthony Pesi, Brinna Kelly, Jason Stuart, Jon Jacobs
Part of me wants to just leave this review blank, perhaps with an exhortation to watch it. Because this is the kind of film where the less you know, the more delightful a treat this is likely to be. But that is a dangerous precedent. There will be five hundred words, dammit. They may be vague and tangential. However, there will be words. It begins with a vintage taxi, driven by Harris (Pesi), goong along a lonely desert road to pick up a fare. It is Penny (Kelly, who also wrote the script). After a few minutes of the usual chit-chat, they drive towards an ominous storm. He turns around to find Penny has vanished without a trace.
A few minutes later, the radio starts to repeat, and we realize Harris is again driving to pick up Penny. But it’s clear he doesn’t remember what took place. At least not initially. For it happens again, with Penny vanishing. And again. And again. As the laps of the apparent time-loop mount up, the deja vu becomes overpowering for Harris. But what can he do about it? Will his dispatcher on the radio (Stuart) be of help? And what of the gradually deepening relationship with Penny? It’s this last element which powers the film, and the actors absolutely sell it. Both of them are very engaging, and I absolutely found myself rooting for them to find a solution, and get the happy ending they deserve.
I’m certainly not going to say any more about the specifics of the narrative. We do learn what’s going on, and it does a better job of explaining the situation than I expected. Maybe you’ll see it coming, but I did not. It is clear there weren’t a lot of resources here. Basically, three actors (one of whom is never seen), one taxi and a lot of green screen. Yet it’s enough to get the job done, and it’s startling since I hadn’t heard of anyone involved in this. It’s a very assured piece of work, made by people who are confident in the power of what they have. They’re right to feel that way, because it’s a strong idea, executed in an impressive manner.
I will confess, there’s probably about fifteen minutes in the middle where the pace drops. It becomes little more than a meet-cute between Harris and Penny, and is about as saccharine as these things usually are. Fortunately, the film suddenly realizes it has fallen asleep at the wheel, and finds a new gear instead. [Ed: that’s enough motoring metaphors] By the end, I wanted to go into a time-loop myself, so I could experience the movie all over again, for the first time. It looks like Hamilton and Kelly have collaborated on a few other movies since. If they’re half as effective, I’m going to have to track them down. For this was among the most pleasant surprises I’ve had this year.