I caught this film yesterday at the St. Louis International Film Festival.
Excitement for this no-budget, local St. Louis independent film was considerable after it first played this past August, so expectations were high. I'd like to cut the home team a break and say I was expecting too much, but the truth is "Amphetamine" stinks. This film could be made by any media/communications undergraduate in the country--and is. Or, at least, was five years ago. I thought brain-dead "Pulp Fiction" remakes were passé by now, but given the enthusiasm from the festival gatekeepers at Cinema St. Louis for this bit of tripe, I guess some things never go out of style.
The film chronicles the attempts of some poorly dressed and loquacious criminals to pull off a big drug heist. If you're not bored yet, you haven't seen a movie in the past 10 years. Some style or creativity could have overcome the tired plot, but the film adds nothing to the standard `blah, blah, blah BANG!' crime comedy formula of the mid-1990's, and if anything the movie seems pretty enthusiastic about its own pointlessness. I suppose writer/director Chris Grega can't be blamed for the fact that all of his tough guy hit men look like they just ended a shift at Vintage Vinyl--college kids work with what they have--but he can be blamed for the fact that the characters speak in bits of dialogue cobbled together from parts of "True Romance" and "Reservoir Dogs," even using the same speech cadences and inflections. (Two different actors were openly doing Tarantino impressions, and if you're going to imitate anything about the man, for God's sake not his acting!)
Grega demonstrates some rudimentary technical skills, and the fact that this movie is completed and packaged shows he is a capable producer. I only hope his first act as director/producer on his next film is to hire a writer, because in 90 minutes of "Amphetamine," I didn't see a single original moment.
