La loi des armes

I recently caught this movie on cable. While the production values definitely had a lower budget, indie feel I thought the movie was quite good. I love small scale action drama movies and this was an excellent example...up until the end. The movie ends very abruptly and with a completely unnecessary cliffhanger that is resolved literally seconds later. To me it felt like an ending that was deliberately placed there by one of these possibilities:

1. The production ran out of money. They wanted to shoot a better ending but simply couldn't due to budget.

2. The studio pressured the director to make a cut, and so to spite them she literally took a meat cleaver to the film.

When the realities of film making tend to stick their noses so blatantly into a movie it tends to ruin the rest of it for me.

I give it a six out of ten, but I will definitely keep eye open for this director in the future.

This is a typical crime film made in the late nineties and early two thousands, focusing on the supporting characters more than the lead; if you have even leads.... It is fast paced, with good directing skills, camera angles. Maybe a bit too complex to floow and then to summarize. I like the Jeff Bridges' character. From actual events.

So what struck me the most about this film is the early morning light that was present throughout. It has that relaxing start-of-the-day feeling that compliments the low-key pace of the story and lack of action in what could have been a pretty brutal film. All the colors are muted as well, the sound track stays in the background, costumes are first-rate, interiors are high-end but restrained, and there are few wild interactions between any of the characters. Moderation in all things, suggesting a reality not based on everyday lives, but of a set of people operating in a parallel world not connected to our own.

Then there's the story. At several points, the Universe screams to a character to just walk away from all this and you'll be fine. The longer you stay the more trouble you're getting in to. It's "don't go down the basement," and what do they do? They go down the basement, of course (in the figurative sense). The ending? That is to say, That's it? The only thing the ending added was a change in style. For the first time, we saw a bright, sunny day with shadows and washed-out colors, perhaps to suggest going back to the normal world. But the actual ending. Gosh, there could have been so much more.

Good acting, good production, but the resolution is for the birds. When the main plot problem is resolved, and you'll know when it is, you can stop watching.

It's a short film on a generally modest scale. It's nothing terribly special but it's certainly a very decent, nicely directed, intelligent, character-driven thriller well worth checking out. In its protracted focus on a single hopelessly pressured individual stuck in the middle of a city street waiting out a desperate situation and expecting to be shot at any second, it rather calls Schumacher's "Phone Booth" to mind but is a great deal better. The direction is taut, the intrigue and suspense nicely maintained. The nicest thing about it is the contrast, that so freaks Lenny out, between the apparently very nice and reasonable.

This film has a surprising realism. Gangster films have almost become a single genre, and as viewers, we've been bombarded with that particular gangster 'type', and to a certain extent, have become desensitized to it. They're simply not dangerous anymore or don't evoke that needed fear and tension. In "Scenes of the Crime" these men came across to me as seriously dangerous, very dangerous; just to know these guys would be a liability. This is what made this film enjoyable, its decision to keep the story real and the actor's more than believable performances.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

According to the credits the movie is based on actual events. And I think it's a quite interesting story. "Scary Movie's" Jon Abrahams, "ER's" Noah Wyle, "Twin Peaks'" Madchen Amick and of course Jeff Bridges himself make a very good cast in a film, that's definitely not a typical production. Though the story is a bit predictable, and some scenes make you wonder why the characters act the way they do, but I found it very entertaining. Mostly because it's a story of a typical young guy (Jon Abrahams), who tries to earn some "extra cash" and by accident he gets involved in a conflict between two gangs. It made me wonder what would I do in a situation like this.

Anyway, if you want a lot of action, don't waste your time. This movie is very "static" and "slow", but I believe it's worth seeing.