The Standoff at Sparrow Creek

For those who love stage-liked story telling, this one is good. But obviously not for everyone. It is enjoyable and seriously well-written.

Sometimes indie films can be a little self indulgent and wayward but not so here. This is an assured and confident piece of work from a first time feature director and I will be looking out for more of his work.

Essentially a one set multi player piece held together by some taut direction and solid performances by Dale & Mulkey in particular, which doesn't try to be too clever.

The opening scenes place us in an unfolding story without exposition and treats the audience as intelligent beings who will follow along and listen and learn - great🙂 The plot has a couple of twists but nothing unreal and the denouement is tragic and moving. As a commentary on the place America currently finds itself in, particularly after the January events in the capital, it is apt and believable.

At 90 something minutes this well worth the investment, give it a go.

Based on other peoples opinions I thought I would not make it to the end. But really, it kept me watching. The uncertainty that keeps you guessing is very well played. Ofcourse it is not one of the true great ones, but at least it has a good story, and a good twist at the end. Maybe it could have used a little more action. Not a bad watch at all.

I'm a big fan of single-location mystery/thrillers. They have produced some of my favourite movies in fact over the years. There's just something about them. I think it stems down to the fact that the director doesn't have the variety in locations to drive his movie, so he has to use the story and dialogue to carry things. Give me that any day of the week. 'The Standoff at Sparrow Creek' won't go down in the category of greats, but it's a pretty solid effort from a debut filmmaker.

The film is very dark for a large majority of the runtime. It can be quite difficult to tell what exactly is going on at certain points. There's a decent sized cast for a clearly low-budget film. Some of the characters are really interesting, others not so much. The interesting ones luckily have the most screen time and carry the weaker ones when they share a scene.

There are some really strong lines of dialogue in this movie too. Some of them caught me off-guard by just how thought-provoking they were. They film does sometimes struggle to justify its already short runtime and it feels like things are being stretched out just a little at times. All in all though I had a good time with 'The Standoff at Sparrow Creek' and if this is where writer/director Henry Dunham is starting his career then the sky is the limit.

Certainly intriguing enough to keep me engrossed throughout and it kept me guessing. But some of the plot elements were nonsensical and the ending seemed more convoluted than it needed to be. Good debut for the writer and director Henry Dunham.