Rating: C+
Dir: Ryan J. Smith
Star: Jake Waring, Grahame Edwards, Elizabeth Hope, Peter Adams
First things first: mad props to Smith, plus his cast and crew, for making a feature film on a budget of £3,000, and with just three days of shooting. The result looks, sounds and generally performs like a far bigger movie. If you know what you’re doing – and Smith clearly does – limited resources really aren’t the limitation they once were. This unfolds largely in Blackpool, where journalist Sam (Waring) has been sent by the owner of a struggling publication (Adams), to do a feature on a small business and its owner. He finds Arthur (Edwards), former soldier and owner of a sprawling antiques shop, with a cinema upstairs, which is heading towards redevelopment as flats. Seems like a suitable subject.
Except the writer forgets the Prime Directive – which applies to journalism as much to Star Fleet – and becomes increasingly involved in Arthur’s life. Sam catches Arthur’s employee, the acerbic Kelsey (Hope), stealing from him, which gets her fired. There’s then an armed robbery of the business, and Sam finds himself mounting a John Wayne-like defense of the property, in the owner’s absence. Matters are complicated, by the sports injury which has left him not exactly agile. Indeed, I suspect if Sam was able to move at a normal pace, this might not have made it to feature length: there seem to be a lot of shots of him limping slowly from place to place, around the maze of corridors and stairs in Arthur’s building.
It feels like an odd mix of genres, competent in most without apparently wanting to commit to any of them. In its quirky characters, it feels like a comedy. Except the only time I really laughed was the comparison of a hot dog to the genitalia of a respected Shakespearean actor. The plot almost has a noir-esque feel, in line with the novel Sam is struggling to write. But the Blackpool location acts (intentionally, I suspect) as a dark cloud that weighs things down. It’s a drama at heart. However, its plot doesn’t send up to scrutiny: for example, the identity of the robbers is hardly the shock the characters affect. Also, the cinema is massive, and impossible to believe sits above a rinky-dink antique shop.
If you’re a stickler for tonal consistency, you should probably give this a pass. However, if you are a little more flexible, there is a seam of pleasures to be mined. Mostly in the two lead performances, which are both warm and likeable. It’s not a chore to spend time with either Sam or Arthur: I’d not have minded simply listening to their conversations for 77 minutes. Despite my qualms above, I’m a sucker for a sad, seaside setting, albeit somewhat less sure whether any non-Brits will understand the cultural significance of Blackpool. It’s all occasionally poignant, yet in a very gentle way, considering this includes shootings and a suicide attempt. Far worse ways to spend three grand, unquestionably.