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Reviews
Mercury Plains (2016)
Meditative study of masculinity and power, not your typical action thriller
Those looking for an action-packed, shoot-'em-up thriller might be disappointed, but that doesn't mean there aren't some worthy ideas and narrative threads at work here. This is a slowly paced film, at times almost meditative, but one that rewards a patient viewer. Don't watch it for shootouts and chase scenes, but rather for a thoughtful treatise on men and boys, fathers and sons, the razor thin line between love and war, and the hollow attraction of lawlessness and moral anarchy -- all shot gorgeously in the dreamlike expanses of the Mexican desert.
The plot is fairly bare bones: a young 20something down on his luck, Mitch (Scott Eastwood), crosses the border from Texas to Mexico out of nothing more than boredom, and winds up getting entangled in a group of lost boys who've been taken in by a Fagin-esque leader, "The Captain," a middle-aged vet who uses his ragtag band to carry out vigilante hits on various drug runners and cartel branches. At first, Mitch is enticed by The Captain's promise of money and claim that something special lies inside of Mitch -- something no one else can see. To the completely lost man-child without a father figure, this serves as motivation to keep Mitch serving as The Captain's "top soldier," even as the group quickly devolves into pure criminal violence and bloody greed. By the end, Mitch is forced to find his own ethical code, something to dictate his sense of self-preservation vs. self-worth.
There is a lot at play here, talk of soldiers and kings and the ownership of territory, that all resonate deeply within our current climate of urban gang warfare and political fear-mongering and appetite for vigilante justice. Eastwood doesn't yet have the gruff gravitas and charisma of his famous father, but he shoulders the movie well, displaying a screen presence that belies his inexperience. The original score is haunting and beautiful, and the cinematography captures desolate landscapes and car chases with equal elegance. If you give yourself time to breathe with this film and meander along at its contemplative tempo, I think you'll appreciate its aim to be something more than just another shoot-out in the desert.
Bright (2011)
A deeply moving and meditative short film
I can't remember the last time I've seen such a truly poetic film – virtually every frame and every line of dialogue comes off as unbelievably precise composition. The acting across the board feels very "lived in," nuanced in a natural way. Nenninger (Troy) is a quiet force: he keeps his fears and loss bottled-up in a taut physicality, and only through his eyes can we get a sense of the emotional turbulence within. Robert Wisdom (Irwin) wonderfully inhabits the complex father (/mother) figure to Troy's lost child, urging his surrogate son to muster the courage to journey into the harsh light—and sometimes darkness—of the real world.
There's a lot of trust here on the part of writer/director Benjamin Busch—a trust in the viewers to engage themselves with the film and work to fill out the narrative, or rather, what's going on beneath the given narrative. Bright is a bit of an iceberg: we're given a straightforward drama on the surface, with a whole lot of seriously weighty matter floating underneath. It'll stick with you long after the final shot, leaving you thinking about your own fears, your own piece of childhood that you may keep alive without even knowing it, about the pools of light and darkness in our lives and how we navigate between them. Bright is an intensely contemplative film and its pace reflects this, but if you allow yourself the time and effort to deeply breath it in, you'll be richly rewarded.
Busch has crafted a profoundly resonant short, and on a shoestring no less. I can only imagine how dangerous he'd be with some money for a feature. Definitely catch this on the festival circuit if you can.