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The Darkest Corner of Paradise
USA 2010
produced by Sara Weintraub, Henry Weintraub, Joseph Sullivan (executive), Leif Fuller (executive), Joey Stutz (executive), Matt Depew (executive) for 531 Productions
directed by Henry Weintraub
starring Patrick O'Driscoll, Kato Buss, John Schmor, Sara Weintraub, Lorien Emmerich, Richard Leebrick, Joey Stutz, John Zoller, Leif Fuller, Yonatan Schultz, Maryjane S. Dunne, Martin Brown, Ryan Duncan, Ryan Gregg, Hannah Hickman, Alexis Schaetzle, Patrick Stutz
written by Michael Burgner, Henry Weintraub, music by Zac Sawyer
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Judging from his degree in accounting, one can assume that college
graduate Peter (Patrick O'Driscoll) hasn't set his goals too high - and
still he's disappointed by real life, when he can't find a proper job in
finance (the economic downturn, you know) and instead becomes a gofer at a
local ice skating rink. The job is by no means challenging, but that's
exactly why it wears him out, intellectually mostly, and the fact that
even the cashier of the place (Lorien Emmerich) looks down on him doesn't
really feed his ego. And the rathole he's forced to call an apartment is
of course not the kind of retreat he has been looking for either ... Then
one day everything changes: Just outside his front door, a disoriented
woman with a wound on her forehead runs into Peter's arms, and when he
takes her in to take care of her, it's not long before he's knocked out,
and when he briefly comes to, he sees her being killed before his very
eyes. When he comes to for good though, the girl and every trace of her
are gone - and without a body or evidence, the police is less than
interested. Peter now makes it his goal, maybe the first one he's ever
had, to find out what has happened - but all he has to go on is a tattoo
he remembers having seen on the girls body ... and yet, he manages to
track down the tattooist who has created it - which is a bad thing,
because the tattooist decides it's a good idea to kill Peter (for reasons
Peter doesn't understand). Peter survives the attempt on his life
though, and now he plans to go after the tattooist and his friends - but
it hasn't 100% dawned upon him that if he's able to track down them, they
might be able to track him down just as easily ... What sounds
like your typical, testerone-driven revenge flick ... quite simply is not.
Instead this is a rather lyrical, even elegical mood piece filmed in stark
black and white, deliberately slow in pace and based on carefully arranged
images much rather than action. But that's not at all to say the film is
dull, it's actually emotionally very involving and manages to tell an
all-too-familiar story in a very unusual and interesting way (so unusual
and interesting in fact that one doesn't mind that large chunks of the
plot remain unexplained). Now despite its plot, this might not be the
right film for the die-hard action fan, but especially if you're less than
interested in yet another revenge flick, you'll want to watch this -
recommended!
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