Synopsis: after the murder of his police officer son in the line of duty, a father who is a veteran police detective, must choose between following the law and seeking vengeance.
Review:
This is a short that I got the chance to check out when the writer and star, Timothy J. Cox, reached out to see if I was interested. Now I normally only review horror related content. Since Cox is local to where I live in Ohio and has done things in the past that I've enjoyed, I wanted to check this out and help spread the word. I also was familiar with the director, Thomas Angeletti, and the co-star of Beth Metcalf among other things.
Now that synopsis does well in giving you an idea what this short is about. It starts as Annie (Metcalf) and her father Michael (Cox) are coming home from the funeral. He is broken by what happened. Annie isn't doing well, but I get the feeling that she is holding it together the best that she can. They both can't be completely broken.
This gets tense though when Annie tries to comfort him by offering a drink. Michael starts to go hard. He also reveals that due to being a police officer, he's going to bend the rules to get revenge. Annie is shocked by what she's hearing. There are good elements here about their ethnic background to help explain why. She also doesn't believe this side of her father that she is seeing. Being that this short only runs 18 minutes, they use every second and reveal elements subtly. That is impressive.
What makes this work is the performances as well. Both look haggard, which fits. They're dealing with the loss of a sibling and a son respectively. I couldn't even imagine something happening to my daughter or my sister. If there is a person who manages it that I could get revenge on, it makes me wonder what I'd do. There's even a step farther that Michael is a detective, so he can pull strings to make things happen. I do like incorporating this idea as it is a hot button issue. It also makes you wonder if you have access to certain help, whether it is morally right, do you accept it? This is something that works in its favor.
Where I'll then start my closing thoughts are how I judge short films. They tend to either be ones that I want more fleshed out or tell a complete story. This is a good one where it falls into both categories. We get an interesting look here at two broken individuals that are dealing with grief in their own ways. How they deal with it could also affect their relationship going forward. There is a route here where we can see a forgiveness story or even one of healing. We don't need it, but it is there if that route is decided to go on.
This is a short film that I'm glad I took the time to check out. I'd recommend it if you want to see a family drama around a tragedy where there are greater implications that come from it. This is one of the earliest things from this crew that I've seen. It is also interesting to see how they've developed from here to newer works as well.
My Rating: 8 out of 10.
