Real Time is a surprisingly compelling film about a brutish hit man taking a young gambling addict, who believes he has nothing and shows him he has something. The film opens with the addict, named Andy, pacing back and forth down a cold and rather dilapidated city-block, memorizing the lineup for a forthcoming horse race and deciding how much to wager in order to win big. We can see how jittery and unstable Andy is, swearing at people he believes ruin his luck for the moment just by walking near him or looking at him, and the way he tries to avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk to adhere to the popular fallacy about avoiding bad luck. His tendencies to maintain his good luck tread dangerously close to obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
Andy is then plucked off the street by Reuban, an intimidating hit man who is hired by Andy's bookie, whom he owes $68,000 to. Reuban informs Andy he has one hour to live before he is killed, following the order of Andy's bookie. Andy, while afraid and nervous about this incident, after a while, doesn't seem to care. It's as if Andy doesn't care after initial thought that he'll be killed. For one, it will rid of him this morose, ugly setting that he has called home for his entire life and has scarcely left, and it will also provide him a release from the shackles that his gambling addiction has brought him.
Director Randall Cole conducts Real Time in, well, real time, meaning that the film progresses without the use of cuts that denote that a large frame of time has just passed. We spend an actual hour with these characters, and Cole refuses to provide cheap subplots to keep the story moving at a rate that would be faster than just following two men around. Spending the actual sixty-minutes with these characters allows for time to pass as authentically as it can and, regardless of the events that unfold, allow us to see in the raw what each minute is spent doing.
Andy is played by Jay Baruchel, a consistently underrated actor, while Reuban is played by Randy Quaid in a surprisingly mellow performance given the actor's track record and his character's personality and occupation. Both of these drastically different actors work wonders for totally different reasons. Baruchel, who has been pretty consistent with his geeky persona in many comedies, plays totally different instruments as Andy, a gambler who fears he has already reached his end times. Baruchel's performance as a paranoid and unstable addict is surprisingly tender and gives off authentic vibes from the apparel right down to the shy, often feeble speech.
Quaid, on the other hand, is simply surprising here. Given his recent track record of outspokenness and blatant remarks about the safety of himself and the world itself, I don't think I was out of line to assume an offbeat and over-the-top performance from him. However, Quaid is surprisingly laidback here, giving his inherently cold archetype of a character a believable human core. Quaid's Reuban is set on showing Baruchel's Andy how, even though he has made some serious mistakes in his life, his entire life is not worthless and that to assume so is an act of selfishness. Throughout the hour, Andy requests to make amends with his grandmother and even visit his old boss in a delightfully unpredictable scene.
Real Time, thankfully, doesn't end with sentimentalism and a profound revelation on the part of Andy that his life is better than countless others. It ends on a contemplative note; one that tries to illustrate any particular deeper meanings on part of Reuban for taking Andy on this melodic ride through life, and how Andy may choose to live his life after this incident (he very well couldn't change a thing). Throughout, Real Time makes great use of its broken-down locations depicting a Detroit-like environment of hopelessness and complete neglect, along with establishing a rich soundtrack of pleasantly alternative rock music. But what it does, above everything, is concoct outstanding chemistry between its leads and give them both characters they probably could never see themselves portraying in such an effective way.
Starring: Randy Quaid and Jay Baruchel. Directed by: Randall Cole.
