Finding Interest

OK, I gave it only 7/10, but that's excellent for a little film like this. If you are really looking for a hidden gem then this got to be the one.

It's basically about a 30-ish year old advertising executive named Barney Barnaby, who is a movie nut - his favorites are the gunslinging kind. To him they are his only escapism. But Barney is depressed and bored with his life and job, so he decides to hire a hit-man to put a hit on himself, with the intention to shoot the hit-man. He thinks that the movies prepared him adequately to have the upper hand in this dangerous game.

The hired assassin soon realizes that his target Barney is his own client and that he is in it for the adventure. Adventure is what he offers him when he asks Barney to take the hit-man's job. Barney, equally afraid as he is thrilled takes up on the offer and he turns into a whole new person, now that he feels like an action character from one of the movies. But he underestimated the dangers that come with the job. Soon his life turns into a nightmare and the line between reality and fiction becomes blurrier and blurrier.

There are a lot of references to the world of movies, making 'Finding Interest' come across very self-aware. It's a nice third wall-breaker that keeps you guessing until the end. Overall it's just an exciting, little, clever thriller about a character I very much cared about, since I could easily identify with him.

This low budget flick is very much a product of the time, the aesthetic and detached subject matter scream early '90s. The protagonist is someone most of us can relate to, a film buff who is disappointed in how small a character he is in his own life. He really just wants to have some sort of adventure as his daydreams and movie-going just aren't cutting it anymore so he manages to find some shady characters and put a contract out on his own life. His plan is to be ready for the hit-man and kill him first. If this plan sounds pretty ill-considered (note that even he doesn't seem to have any clear conception of what might happen after the showdown with the assassin) that's because it is and naturally it all quickly goes awry. He gets deeper and deeper into trouble and eventually realizes that his obsession with violent adventure has caused him to miss out on a shot at real (albeit utterly conventional) happiness with an attractive acquaintance. Naturally for this type of film Finding Interest is actually a bit twistier than I'm willing to talk about here. It gets less believable as it goes but poignancy is added by a coincidence in relationships. Basically, this is a fun, noirish film which addresses the way people interact with fiction in a fairly unique fashion.

Barney Barnaby works as an advertise executive and except for the movies he admires his life is extremely boring. He's secretly in love with a girl at work but doesn't really have the guts to tell her so. What he does is makes a contract on himself and awaits for a hitmen so that he can battle it out with him just like the heroes on the big screen but when the time comes he bails out and when the hitmen and Barney meet the hitmen gives him the choice to be a hitmen himself which he agrees to but then finds himself somewhere in between becoming a killer and reality becomes more like fiction. Made on a low budget and with unknown actors this is a great movie.

There is many things that just makes it such a wonderful treat that I can't mention all of them.