Don't Be a Hero

It is unbelievably rare that you find a decent short film you like. This was a little better, but like so many others it just leaves you going "so what"? It's difficult to make a short because you have time constraints on what you can show, and doesn't leave you much time for characters, relationships and plot, so they usually pick one which for the most part isn't enough to make an engaging film.

Obviously the beginning of the film was taken from Take The Money and Run where Virgil hands the teller a note and she can't read what it says so they begin to argue over it.

The best short cinema (part of a feature) was the first 8-10 minutes of UP (animated) and shows you how to create an amazing short story that leaves you crying in such short time.

The cinematography was good and the acting was decent. Writing not so good. The story (based on a true story) felt unfinished. The interesting part started toward to the end but went nowhere. Unfortunately. One of the better shorts, but still not good enough to make it great.

...is the best part of this short film. Because you understand it , feel it. A bored middle age woman. The drops of adrenaline. The need of real sense of life. And the fall of each new try for a sort of happinnes. A nice film proposing a too familiar story working more like a too repeted lesson. The result is decent, the use of real story inpiring it - not bad but, after its end you feel something missing.

I'm told this is inspired by a true story, but honestly I'm not sure how much difference that will make to the viewer because no matter what part of this character is fictionalized extension, the film makes her convincingly real anyway. In terms of narrative, the film is only really a handful of scenes/moments, and there isn't really a flow through a story so much as there is time with a person. Lizzy Jo starts the film in the persona of bank robbery, and we see this element first because the disguise is stripped away to give us a tired woman in a drab and unfulfilling life. The money unspent below the bed tells us that the robbery is only about the escape and the rush, but then we know this from the content of the film generally as well.

The film benefits greatly from how good Missy Pyle is, as she totally lands the character. As well-known and glamorous as she is, here she carries the character from the inside out, and I did believe her even in the most downbeat of moments. The film matches this in small ways, because the robbery opener is sharp, well-lit, and feels "crisp", whereas the rest of the scenes in her normal life have a tinge of dirt and sweat to them - hard to describe but the cinematographer did good on the film's look. The end result is a film that centers round a strong character in a way that is engaging and satisfying.