Trying to emulate the greats really just makes you stand out and fall short
Synopsis: During a raging snowstorm, a drifter returns home to the blue-collar bar located in the remote Canadian town where he was born. When he offers to settle an old debt with a grizzled bartender by telling him a story, the night’s events quickly spin into a dark tale of mistaken identities, double-crosses and shocking violence.
Director: Cody Calahan
Writer: Peter Genoway
Stars: RJ Mitte, Peter Outerbridge, Ari Millen
Certification: 15
Run Time: 1hr 30mins
DaveOnFilm says: When dialogue driven storytelling is done well, a film will grip you and hold you in the palm of its hand as it gently guides you through the twists and turns of the story with every word delivered. Tarantino does it best for me…two people in a room talking. That’s pretty much what happens here when Steve (RJ Mitte) turns up in the bar to talk to Paul (Peter Outerbridge). He begins to tell him a story. Then we flip into said story which is pretty much a two-people-talking-in-a-bar situation too. At one point I was pretty convinced we were going to fall into storytelling Inception but we didn’t. And this is a good thing because the storytelling in the whole film just isn’t that engaging.
The acting is actually pretty good and cannot be faulted here, but the story really lets it down. I wanted it to be more shocking than it was, more twisty than something you can see coming a million miles away and just more substantial than what we actually got in the end.
It’s far from being a terrible movie and some will enjoy it, but I just didn’t feel as drawn in and as engaged as I should have been.
DaveOnFilm.co.uk 