We have the story of a pathologist who develops a device that can read memories after death, and gets assassinated for it. Along with this, it's a tangled plot of assassins, police and some high ranking officials targeted for murder with no real motive or clues to their killers. And a child is born.
That might be the least sensical plot outline I've ever written, but I'd be unable to do much better. The film is really quite confusing, not giving us much background on any of the characters and not giving us a clue as to which we should be paying more attention to. Perhaps this weakness is the film's strength, however ,as it does cause me to want to see it again. By the end, you should have a handle on who most of the people are (though not all) and this information would be more helpful at the beginning.
The acting lies on a scale between poor and great, presumably because the case was put together with a mixture of friends and semi-professional actors. At least, that would be my guess. Much of the time, the acting was over-done, but a few players shine through as having a future in the business. The most enjoyable character for me was actually the cab driver (played by Oral Sledge) and I do hope he shows up in future projects.
What this film does best is nail the costumes and scenery with an absolute perfection. There is no way I could put costumes together in such a profession way on a shoe-string budget. And the scenery is also marvelous. Hospitals, office buildings and a mansion that I presume was filmed in a hotel (but it works). The director has an eye for settings.
The directing, by the way, was very good. A big round of applause needs to go to Richard Celenza (who also stars and produced this -- actually, he did pretty much everything). I noticed a lot of angles and switches used, which is a strength. The crew certainly knew when to show us other characters in a room and get their faces on film at the right time. Some minor complaints: the gunshots were a bit weak -- and what's with the 2-year old newborn baby?
As I said above, the plot and characters are a bit fuzzy, but the catch worked -- I will definitely give this one another chance. The acting may be weak in places, the film quality is very low budget, and the film is in dire need of a sound stage. But this is all easily overlooked once you tune out reality and become part of the story, which is gripping and could easily be adapted into a bigger budget film (on top of the alleged comic book and video game versions).
