Hello Gangster

I found this film from an AMA on reddit about people who said they were "guerilla filmmakers" and filmed this for only $1,500. I didn't really know what to expect, but it was definitely beyond my expectations, both in terms of quality but also the subject matter being wildly different from what their description suggested. All they said was that it was about millennials being in some kind of desperate situation. Instead of a poorly-shot documentary about whiny twenty-somethings crying outside of a shopping mall it was actually a thoughtful and artistic meditation on a doomed generation that was subtly hilarious throughout, and also quite disturbing to me well after I finished it.

Simon is your typical meek individual with a dead-end job, no girlfriend, no future, and no resolve to really do anything about it. He lives with Matt, a narcissistic, washed-up musician who is so full of himself that he can't even understand when he gets himself into bad situations. Their only friend is Louis, some rich kid from China who is Matt's biggest fan.

The humor is very subtle. No slapstick here. Although there is a lot of cursing and outrageous things being said, the comedy arises more from how unaware the characters are of their own shortcomings as people, more like a Wes Anderson movie than Seth Rogan. In other words, a laugh track would never work on this movie because it would never seem like it fits.

For a low-budget film, there was a surprisingly good story-arc as we watched Simon grow from a passive- aggressive loser who seemed to genuinely care about other people into a nearly diabolical monster, and we got to see Matt exposed for the phony coward that he is. Louis really surprised me as I never thought he would do what he showed to be capable of at the end.

It is kind of self-indulgent at times with a lot of unnecessary attempts to make the film arty when I wish it would focus more on the characters and their funny dialogue. There was a lot of great chemistry between the three main actors, which is a good thing because hardly anything ever happens in this movie until near the end. They still managed to make their mundane lives into something worthy of the big screen, which is why I awarded the movie 8 stars.