Post by StevePulaski on May 18, 2016 18:13:37 GMT -5
Standoff (2016)
Directed by: Adam Alleca
Rating: ★★★½
Directed by: Adam Alleca
Rating: ★★★½
Few genres are more dead or unloved in modern American cinema than the western, but Adam Alleca's Standoff proves that while the genre may be sparsely embraced in current times, new-age suspense films and thrillers can assume the conventions of one just as well.
Standoff is a classic Western formula: two men at odds with one another that could easily get out of their current situation if one would be willing to sacrifice something. It is the stubbornness of the one individual that handicaps the entire situation and what unfolds is a process of outwitting and outlasting the other man as the night looms over the characters like a storm-cloud. Tensions flair, patience thins, and mental mind-games begin as both try to go about getting their own way.
The film opens with a young girl nicknamed "Bird" (Ella Ballentine) visiting the gravesite of her parents with her aunt's boyfriend in the middle of nowhere. Bird carries a camera everywhere she goes, a relic of her parents that keeps them closer to her. When her guardian disappears for a brief view moments Bird winds up witnessing a masked hitman (Laurence Fishburne) killing several people attending a funeral before burying them in the freshly dug grave, capturing the events with her camera. When her aunt's boyfriend resurfaces, Bird instinctively cries for help seconds before he's shot dead by the armed assailant, who has taken his mask off upon burying the evidence.
The number-one rule for any hitman worth the money is that anyone who sees his or her face must die, so Bird, despite her young age and innocence, needs to be shot and killed according to cold-blooded killer. Bird seeks refuge in the home of Carter Green (Thomas Jane), who has packed up all his things but has decided to leave one day too late. The hitman winds up following Bird to Carter's shack before shooting and wounding Carter's leg in efforts to try and get to Bird and kill her.
Carter's only weapon of defense is a rifle that's purpose is largely to shoot quails in mid-air, equipped with only one bullet, while the hitman is armed with a supply of bullets for his pistol that need not be rationed with the way he carelessly fires. Carter and Bird take refuge upstairs, throwing broken light-bulb glass on the stairs in order to hear if the man comes up the stairs. From there on out, it's a cat and mouse game, with Carter's generator running low on power, meaning total darkness is imminent, and the hitman's desire to dig through Carter's stashed belongings and uncover his backstory and reason for wanting to leave his home so badly.
Standoff is essentially a stageplay; it features one setting, three main characters, and a potboiling premise that capitalizes off of both parties' fears, one more than the other. Fishburne's mannered, controlled ego that only comes to explode every now and then makes him a presence that captivates whenever he speaks. His words carry an identifiable weight to them whenever he chooses to make his ideas heard, and Jane is the loose-cannon, shaggy contrast to a much more assured presence.
But that is neither here nor there. Writer/director Adam Alleca does his best to make these men equals, both giving them discernible amounts of power and eventually resorting them to one another's level as the film progresses. At a lean, eighty-six minutes, Standoff makes the most of its characters and their backstories, all while never being emotionally manipulative despite its young girl at the core of the whole debacle nor becoming too predictable by making the actions of the two men of the story overreaching. Both Fishburne and Jane give strong performances inside a minimalist, Western plot that revolves around the unsettling aura of the middle of nowhere and the unrelenting stench of desperation that brews inside the hearts of both men. Standoff is the kind of film you catch fifteen minutes in on basic cable and assure yourself you'll watch it for only five more minutes time and time again until you see the end credits roll.
Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Thomas Jane, and Ella Ballentine. Directed by: Adam Alleca.