Dashcam

Best film I've seen all year. Very realistic and anxiety inducing. The acting was superb and great cinematography for a film that mostly took place in one location. I highly recommend it!

Our lead guy is an unlikeable nitwit who edits news footage from his bedsit while sighing a lot. He's waiting at his computer for some police dashcam footage to arrive for a tv news report. We sit with him and watch him wait. He takes some video calls from his 'friends' (people he seems to hate) and then we watch him sit quietly while nothing arrives. Sometimes he'll swear out loud for no reason. Sometimes he'll move his mouse slowly across the his computer screen to open Facebook or download a file. This is the entire first act.

After 25 minutes he finally gets the footage and slowly looks through it. Ten minutes later he goes to the bathroom. I mean, it's gripping stuff.

The smattering of other 'characters' appear as faces and/or voices via computer, a tired gimmick which has been employed in several (slightly) better movies. This is yet another five minute story stretched to movie length for reasons unknown. It's punishingly boring. There are true crime videos on youtube that can tell a complete story in 15 minutes. Usually made by one person. I respect those people.

You get to watch this guy editing and zooming in and isolating sound and isolating movement of dashcam footage that he wasn't supposed to get for a news broadcast. This goes on and on and on. Nothing about this movie surprised me, including the ending. Absolutely nothing. I gave it a three instead of a one because I actually liked the main actor.

The filmmaker sites quite some classics (the Conversation with Gene Hackman) not just as inspiration but as a tentpole. A movie this is trying to match one might say. The lead performance is really engaging and tight to say the least. Apparently he is a star of some sorts (influencer or youtube or something, I never had seen him before - but he's really good in this) - don't hold it against him.

There are certain hickups and if you are not into film editing, you'll either appreciate learning more about it (also the rendering and buffering times, that seem to play out in real time - you still have to have a good PC for this to work) ... but the main thing is: cover ups and conspiracies ... are they real? Well the movie surely answers that definitively - whether that says something about other stuff going on currently or not, will be up on how you view it. I'd say no ... but as I said, you might feel differently.

What we got was pretty decent but there were definitely aspects that were too drawn out and others that were very lacking. Also, seems as if you are headed to a destination you never reach. It draws you in, making you pay close attention for that key element, and then lets you down. It lets you down in a way that makes you believe the answer is right around the corner though. This would be great if it was the first film of a series with different perspectives of the "incident" and aftermath, like an anthology, that eventually told us why it occurred to begin with. If you think of it in this manner then it was pretty good. I really want more.