Delivered

This film is completely underrated.

It's a film similar to Will Keenan and Patrick Hasson's Waiting, as well as Adrien Brody's Restaurant and the classic film Breaking Away, which are all about young adults who are stuck and know they're stuck, with little or no chance of breaking free.

Death By Pizza (Delivered) is about an intelligent, free-thinking, artistic young adult (Will, played by David Strictland) who is stuck and waiting, bitter at the world's hypocrisy and bitter at his own lack of direction and desire. Will meets his nemesis, Reed (Ron Eldard), another intelligent young adult who's so bitter, he's chosen the path of crime. Both end up helping each other to free themselves of their bitterness, which enables them to get unstuck.

For these young adults, getting unstuck, or, breaking free, can mean both forging ahead into life, and plunging downward into death.

Will's life is filled with the trademarks of a young "stuck" adult: a soul-sucking, sweaty, under-paying job, crude customers, an ex-girlfriend who left him because he was unmotivated, a partial college education with no degree, a house filled with self-made art, and of course the new friend whose ung-dly choices help him to save himself.

College dropout Will Sherman (David Strickland) is a pizza delivery man and an aspiring comic book artist. His ex Claire doesn't want to get back together. He delivers a pizza to the scene of an impending murder but the killer (Ron Eldard) covers it up by pretending to be the pizza customer. The killer decides to take him out as a possible witness but gets inspired to change course.

I want to say that the basic concept has potential. An underachieving pizza guy gets tangled up with a serial killer. At times, I like this story but this movie mostly frustrates me. First, I find Will an infuriating lead character. I dislike his self-pitying arrogance. He has a sarcasm without being funny. He's also rather dumb when the cops start suspecting him. It doesn't make sense that he doesn't grab the cops to rush home with him when the pizza gets delivered there. Time and time again. He's doing slightly wrong things. Second, I dislike the bad police trope. I understand it but the cops would never act that way in his face. They are too one-note. Third, even Claire gets into the race for the dumbest move in the movie. When Will gets to her parents' home, I figured the best way to end the movie is for the killer to find them there. I never thought that she would also be dumb. It's a few too many dumb people.

This movie has a problem. Well... actually it has several problems. But the most pressing one is that the characters in it keep going on about "creativity" and "original thought"... and the main effect of this is to persistently draw attention to the fact that there's precious little in the way of original thought or real creativity in this film. An interesting question... is the writer being ironic? No, perhaps it isn't really an interesting question after all, since it doesn't really matter... the movie is basically going over ground already so well trodden it's threadbare, and it would take someone extremely naive to think this is "original"... and irony doesn't really alter anything. The movie also tries to cover its bets by including a "life affirming message". Recommended only to young folks with intellectual inclinations and not much of a clue.

The original story and funny compelling characters went over well for a teen girls slumber party movie (2 times now). I loved it, it was fun and moved quickly, no boring drawn out scenes. It is violent and has a little language (though most of it is covered up). Its a great movie. David Strickland was a terrific actor. Ron Eldard gave a wonderful performance. I watch it with the girls every time.

flick takes the STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY, etc. model of an unwanted double committing crimes that act to frame the hero because they fit with his motives. it's an old premise; in fact, everything about this unpretentious low-budgeter has the feel of a well-worn baseball glove- old but sturdy, tried but true, comfortably threadbare. you know all the grooves at first touch. the neat little spin here is the setting of post-secondary discontent; the hero is the disaffected misanthrope who scorns pretensions in others while doing nothing himself- a type so familiar to anyone under 35, especially in a college setting, that it's well on its way to becoming a new cliche. the bruno to his guy is a cutesy little psycho, hip and self-assured, who carries out the innocent's bitter "f___ the world" thoughts....it's simple stuff, really, but the film's wonderfully modest ambitions actually felt like a relief to me. it aims low and hits bang on; there's nothing at all wrong with that. and i loved the disaffected-slacker spin on the whole thing; the flick is cool as a gentle admonishment of sour gen-x (or whatever it's called now) disaffection, giving an example of how a bad attitude will give you a bad time in life. misanthropy sucks, man.......