High Life

It's 1983. Ex-con Dick (Timothy Olyphant) is a hospital janitor. He gets an unwelcome surprise visit from cell-mate Bug (Stephen Eric McIntyre) who just got out of prison and promptly gets him fired. Bug still thinks Dick owes him. Dick decides to recruit fellow junkies Donnie (Joe Anderson) and Billy (Rossif Sutherland) to rob the new fandango ATMs. The plan goes wrong and they decide to take an armor truck instead.

Olyphant and company play good hapless junkies. One can almost see their stink lines. There is some fun junkie hijinx. There are a few real laughs. The main thing missing is a first class director. Gary Yates is not really good enough. It's TV movie level work at best.

How I love to discover hidden little gems like this dark comedy about a bunch if criminals. High on dope and low on IQ, high on aims but low on life, this film by Canadian director Gary Yates succeeds in being his most interesting so far.

With a serious undertone, still the main thing of this film is to entertain, but also gives a good glimpse into the everyday life of petty time criminals addicted to drugs. And entertaining it is, if you're not expecting too much of an action flick.

We meet Dick (Timothy Olyphant) and some of his bad buddies back in 1983, all dependent on drugs, and all except one, jail birds. Dick involves Bug, Don and Billy in a bank heist. Of course a very bad idea, with a very stupid gang, which has to go horribly wrong...

Well acted by all, suitable for such a comedy. A great and very suitable score follows the film throughout, adding to the pleasant watch. You might want more of the ending, but otherwise this does the job. You also might react to the cars being used in the film is very worn to be in the eighties, and the Mercedes used there didn't come into production until 1986. But that shouldn't ruin your enjoyment of watching this. It's not by any means a fast paced film, more slow, but relying in he acting. Nice little film!

Not a classic or a masterpiece but a very entertaining comedy with some action thrown in. It moves along at a decent pace and had some real funny moments. It is what the 3 stooges robbing a bank movie would look like.

The film does have some moments.

Just not enough to string together to make a fully enjoyable movie.

Almost all of the highlights belong to Timothy Olyphant who is launching his career long charm offensive.

Beyond that, its really a nothing movie full of characters you could easily live without ever meeting.

As a result the movie is just as frustrating as it is funny. Mediocre springs to mind when thinking about High Life.

All the other aspects of the film are pretty run of the mill, it looks ok, it sounds ok and is thankfully short.

See it for Olyphant only otherwise give it a wide berth :)

Caught this on Showtime, and it struck me as a real gem flying low under the radar. Though obviously not big budget, it held my interest and really worked. Excellent script, acting, etc. (For some reason it reminded me of Dustin Hoffman's "Straight Time".)

While Showtime has far more than its share of truly awful gay vampire flesh eating low budget considerable violations of the film genre pieces of crapola, sometimes, "even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then."

Consider this little jewel a humble acorn undeserved by Showtime.

This flick really works. I've done some time on the street, and have seen the interaction of morons with reality. One is left pondering that classic bit of wisdom, "The best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray..."

But, even if you are a loser, you have to play out your hand. What the arty fartsy French existentialists would term, "La condition humaine."