The newest Wild Dogs Production is a highly suspenseful crime-drama full of plenty of twists and turns. It details a series of seedy, unlikeable characters and their efforts to obtain a large sum of ransom money. The film is gritty, nihilistic, and given the aforementioned nature of the characters, there really isn't anyone to root for. Despite appearing larger in scale in the trailer, the film has plenty going for it despite its small budget. It's well shot, fairly well acted, and not really predictable in the slightest. That said, the movie seems to suffer a bit in the pacing department at times and doesn't really deliver in memorable or stand-out scenes beyond the first half. Furthermore, some plot details and twists come out a little bit awkward and confusing. Somehow though the whole thing seems to come together by film's end, if leaving a few questions to ponder. All in all, a solid enough effort. Even if it doesn't quite "fire on all cylinders", it really makes you think.
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Pycal23 September 2012
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paul-ayres-607845 September 2018I don't want to ruin this for anyone so I will keep it brief. This is a tale of kidnapping with plenty of surprises and twists but it all becomes crystal clear in the end. Well worth a watch despite the low budget production.
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Fredianelli struck B-movie Silver with 2011's THE SCARLET WORM, a relatively polished period film set in the old west featuring a cast with numerous professional actors and a small but dedicated crew of collaborators. His subsequent "Lone Wolf" films since then have been a bit of a step down in terms of production value, often looking more humble like student films or "porn without the porn" due to the combination of no production design, basic cinematography, and bad acting. MONEY represent somewhat of a return to form, comfortably unambitious in its setting and subject matter being set in the contemporary "real world" for a change (something not seen since his wacky underground comedy THE BIG SLEAZE) and featuring much better acting and scripting from Fredianelli and co. than I've seen in a while.
Fredianelli himself has one of the best performances in the film, playing a burnt-out hit-man who gets a great monologue in toward the conclusion. Ray Medved as a desperate man covering up his crime and the plucky & attractive young woman who plays the prostitute both turn in comparatively good work as well. There's a couple good shootout scenes which feel fairly realistic, and best of all there's an unpredictable atmosphere to the movie as it impressively defies falling into clichés or conventions. I couldn't identify any one character as a clear protagonist, even though it feels fairly conventional early on. Instead the narrative focuses more on a string of events in which a lot of disparate characters' lives are connected. None of these characters are particularly likable per-say, but as flawed individuals they come across as more human, perhaps the most vivid characterizations I've seen in a Fredianelli-penned movie so far.
The shortfalls in the movie have to do almost entirely with the budget and that the filmmaker is quite visibly overstretched, wearing almost every hat in the production and post-production area of the film. While such versatility is very impressive in principle, it also opens the film up to a lot of sloppiness which wouldn't have been an issue had there been, say, a dedicated art director or production manager. For instance, a key sequence in which an unsavory character makes a high- risk sniper shot is completely ruined because his prop weapon is obviously a BB gun with no scope! This destroys any sense of realism that the film relied on, and some weak performances really don't help matters much at all.
Added to that, a lot of the film is really slow, with static dialog scenes where characters just stand around and say things to each other. I'm sure if Fredianelli could focus on directing these scenes, there'd be a lot more life to them, but as it is I'm sure he was trying to manage just too much and had too much on his plate to really polish them as they needed. This is a shame as this film feels about 90% of the way there to having the makings of a BOONDOCK SAINTS-style underground hit. Unfortunately in such a crowded market of underfunded indie cinema, it's that last 10% that can make a huge difference in getting a film like this noticed. -
twolanebl14 March 2013A second viewing of Fredianelli's latest both smoothed out some of my initial issues with it but exacerbated others. But make no mistake, for its first 2/3, this is some of the best filmmaking of Fredinaelli's career. The kaleidoscopic narrative revolves around his usual themes of humanity's general ugliness, but there's more balance here to the morality, mostly due to the show stopping shot-reverse shot showdown between Fredianelli and newcomer Zoe Winter in a seedy hotel room. The moody lighting, the longer takes, and the simplicity of the editing allow both actors to work the scene out in an organic, powerful way. Winter, in particular, does quite a lot with her silence that gives the scene a gravity and intimacy that makes it surprising that the two characters had just met. But that's also ignoring what builds to that narrative, and I think perhaps the most noteworthy move here is how Fredianelli, without warning, allows himself to kill of major characters without much pomp or circumstance (the kind that makes Joss Whedon a hardcore hack).
The film's second round shifts to capable actors, including some very interesting scenes among Big Spence and his friends. The part where Big Spence chastises his friend for crying while under gunpoint is handily paid off later when he finds himself crying as he waits to be finished off. The sniper sequence in particular sticks out as a nicely suspenseful set piece, even if its spatial distances between shooters and hits might stretch credibility (then again, that's not a valid criticism in my opinion, although it could also be levied against the BB-gun rifle that gets perhaps one too many close-ups near the beginning). Some plot holes are filled awkwardly, and we get the occasional awkward line read or line of dialogue, but those issues don't end up mattering much in comparison to some structural issues that come out in the final 1/3. That's not to say that the end doesn't have a lot of good things going on in it. The pedophile character, in particular, is quite well-drawn, even if I can't quite imagine Winter's character telling her about the girl knowing that he's a chimo. The ending scene, though, has just the right balance between significance and casualness that makes the film fire on all cylinders in its best moments. Maybe the narrative would be better served with fewer flashbacks and less emphasis on twist-centric finishing, but the rest of the film is good enough to justify it. And overall, Fredianelli's diagnoses continue to be more precise, more measured and mature, to keep things fresh despite a continued emphasis on misanthropy. In the end, the shots are mostly just right, sometimes quite beautiful (the hotel room scene, an early night scene, and the ending shots come to mind immediately), and we get the traditional weirdness (emphases on, in sequence, Cuban v. prosciutto sandwiches, and then Cool Ranch Dorritos) that we come to expect when we see A Wild Dogs Production Presents.