This film does a lot with very little. It's not a big-budget CGI-laden flick or all-star cast A24-style production, but you never get the sense it's trying to be. It's rather an exercise in budget minimalism within the action-thriller genre, a class of film where operating with little budget is incredibly challenging. In that, it surpasses all expectations.
The first thing that stands out is the acting, which stands up admirably against any action thriller, but is head and shoulders above performances in other action B movies. As a lover of this genre, I can tell you that the performances in these kinds of movies are often an afterthought, if not altogether scorned by the cast and crew. In Project Dorothy by contrast, the performances between the film's two stars (Tim DeZarn plays an aging criminal mentor to Adam Budron's character, Blake) feel multilayered, yet natural. The film is not a dialogue-first character piece, but it does interweave a good character-to-character subplot below the main brunt of action and suspense, something movies with 10X this film's budget so often fail to do.
The writing also holds up well, with dialogue not feeling forced or over-engineered, and a pacing structure that neither feels too fast nor too slow (another common pitfall of the genre).
Lastly, the directing deserves a lot of praise for, again, doing a lot with very little. Keeping an entire film within the confines of an abandoned warehouse is not an easy task for an easily bored action-thriller viewer base (I count myself among them), but the film at no point feels boring or rushed. There are brief moments of camp or that require a brief suspension of disbelief (why is there no dust in the warehouse, for example), but among the pantheon of sins this genre is known for, these are easily forgiven and forgotten, and all in all, I was having far too much fun to care.
All in all, this film does an impressive with incredibly little. Hats off to the filmmakers for their efficiency and skill in taking what should have been another wooden micro-budget B-movie, and making it a fun, engaging, and at times even heartfelt story.
