More Than a Job's Worth

I saw this at the Greenwich Film Festival and was most impressed by the direction of the piece (The film's director won Best New Director at the festival).

In the short running time (10 mins) of the film, we are introduced to WILL, a work experience kid with a gift. In the beginning it is unclear as to what this story might be about, but through some imaginative use of flashbacks and introduction of supplementary characters, the story unfolds nicely and wraps up cleanly in the time available.

The acting was good and one really is convinced that the other main character Prakash, is like that in real life (although we'd dread to meet someone as judgemental as that in person!). The directing was also very professional and helped in developing the story and setting the foundation for the piece.

Well worth watching and quite an impressive festival debut from a young director.

Ed is on work experience at the job centre, working with a slightly older man to deal with enquires and type them into the system. His mentor thinks he can read people easily but Ed knows better – he has a gift of doing just that – seeing their past and their actions played out in front of him.

This is the simple set up for a short story that plays on this ability without really adding much in the way of substance into the mix. The flashes of people's pasts suggest that it is heading somewhere but, when we get to the final story it is too simple and unlikely to really satisfy as a conclusion. We know nothing more than we did at the start except that maybe this gift is real and, in this story, items can bring bad luck. "So what?" you may ask – and so did I.

The direction is OK and the flashback scenes are pretty stylish despite being a little obvious and recognisable but the story isn't there. The acting is OK but again with nothing to work with in terms of meaning, most of them are just there. Mootoo is natural and convincing but unfortunately is playing the arrogant sort of wide-boy tw*t that we all wish we didn't know but do.

Overall, more meaning or substance would have been a vast improvement on what we have here because, despite being quite interesting on the whole, the end result is pointless and quite unsatisfactory.

I cannot understand where the last reviewers comments were coming from. This film has won awards for its direction and substance. The acting was superb, the camera work was very impressive and direction deserved the praise it received from the pros. Some people have obviously forgotten what it is like to be an up and coming director with budget restrictions and no bottomless pit of funding from a multinational film sponsor.

Yeah, I'm sure you could ask Tom Cruise to appear in your film if you had the money but the fact is everyone on this set worked for free and for the love of film making and not to be out there trying to impress spoilt viewers.

This film shows ambition and talent over and above a lot of the rubbish on TV at the moment. The characters were explored and developed, the script was exciting and original and had just the right amount of impact for a short. Let's see some more, Alex!

OK, this site is all about reviewing films - this being a short film it will never have the depth of plot or character building detail that your average full length feature is going to have.

However, i feel it is a very good depiction of what can be done on a limited budget and is a testimony to the direction and organisational skills of the director Alexandra Kalymnios.

The editing is faultless and the camera work very professional - in fact the production as a whole considering it was set-up on a budget without a studio - just a location, no doubt organised and set-up for free is well executed.

The short template for the story means that there is not really enough time to create too complex a story - finding a short script that works well in this is in itself a difficult task.

So based on this i think it is hard to review effectively a home made film in the same category as a full budget feature.

It is a hard task that has been well executed, part of being a young director is experimenting - not all directors get it right to start off with - Peter Jackson started out with films such as Braindead - not to everyone's taste but it lead to better things.

I don't think many people would watch this film unless they liked and appreciated film, but i suspect that the director will have great things to come as yet and I for one fully support all young film makers in a competitive and soul testing career!