Gumshoe (2014) User Reviews

Interesting idea that sadly stayed underwhelming for me

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 20 December 2018]

This is Gumshoe, a black-and-white 5-minute live action short film from 2014 written and directed by Matt Steinauer and this means it has its 5th anniversary soon. It takes us a bit into the world of detectives, criminals and femmes fatales again in the sense of old noir movies, so to me it did feel a bit like Sin City here and there. But I had one crucial problem with it, namely the first person perspective. It was an interesting idea to bring in something new, but I think this film is somewhat evidence why it is used so rarely in movies these days. It just works better for video games when you are in control of the characters. And also story-wise it was not as good as I hoped it would be with the plot twist at the very end being the somewhat only memorable aspect that cannot make me forget about the minutes before that which were genuinely mediocre. A bit of a pity as I see some talent and new ideas here and the cast is also not too bad. I think I have heard of Paget Brewster for example before watching this one already. Good news for all non-English speakers as there is no dialogue in here really, just noises and groans and in addition also sound effects like lightning and very loud music that sometimes feels right, but on other occasions like it was trying to hide this film's emptiness. All in all, I give this movie a thumbs-down. Not recommended.