Rating: D+
Dir: Nathan Shepka
Star: Nathan Shepka, Colin MacDougall, John Michael-Love, Matt Symonds
Perhaps subtitle this, “A Learning Experience.” As first features go, it isn’t terrible, but the harsh reality is, first features are rarely good. Even for directors who go on to greatness, most tend to be closer to Piranha 2: The Spawning than Citizen Kane. This has a reasonable enough, fairly simple, idea. The problems are more in the execution, which stutters from acceptable to… not. The heroes are Nick (Shepka) and Derek (MacDougall), whom we meet again in Lock & Load, a pair of private security consultants. They’re engaged to provide protection for someone running from a drug lord. But he turns up dead at the meeting, albeit leaving a case of money behind. The case’s “rightful” owner, Barnes (Michael-Love) wants it back.
That’s your basic plot. However, one of the issues is a fondness to over-embroider this with unnecessary ornamentation, when its strength is in its simplicity. For example, the first scene has Nick and Derek showing up to act as bodyguards to a businessman and his wife. We get a lengthy explanation of the situation, but guess what? None of it matters in the slightest. We do not care who they are, or why they are being targeted, and it’s irrelevant to the bigger picture. Similarly, the film feels like it ends, with the villains defeated. But, wait! Turns out someone else was involved! So we get a twenty-minute epilogue, which feels tacked on, apparently existing mostly so they can blow up an outbuilding on a farm.
I mean, I get that it’s a nice explosion, not least for being practical rather than the typical refuge of low-budget movies, bad CGI. But do we really need to see it from – and I rewound to count this – twelve different angles? When concentrating on the core story, the film is generally more engaging. Although some supporting characters can barely act, others are interesting, such as Barnes’s enforcers, Gina (Jemima Spence) and the appropriately-named Grande (Symonds). The latter is 6’7″, a pro wrestler, and appears to be channelling the spirit of Wade Barrett. Which makes it surprising there are times when the hand-to-hand stuff seems like it’s carried out at ‘first rehearsal’ speed. This is the area where Shepka’s subsequent Lock & Load most obviously improved.
There’s a lot of gun-play here too, an equally mixed bag. For instance, we have two supposedly professional security operatives, taking shelter behind what must be the least effective shield in movie history (top). Would it have hurt them to flip the table on its side, at least. Oh, and the Santa hats? Those apparently include a tracker, allowing their sniper accomplice to identify them. Except the scanner she uses also shows the enemy, who are not festively attired. So, the point was…? But again: first feature, and that one is always going to be the hardest to get right, or anything in the vicinity of right. Subsequent events prove Shepka learned a lot from this, and that’s probably the most important thing.