User Reviews

Bald, dumpy, bespectacled average schmo Raymond Brody (superbly played by Jeff Strong), a meek, browbeaten insurance salesman and over-the-phone telemarketing scam artist par excellence, is so fed up and frustrated with being pushed around and ignored by women that he decides to ventilate his pent-up rage by making a prank call. He tells the abusive, overbearing ex-cop father of a luckless young woman named Tanya (a fine and heartbreaking performance by the lovely Lara Phillips) that Tanya has tested HIV positive. Tanya shoots her dad dead when he gets on her case about it. She goes to jail. Tanya's useless layabout sleazeball boyfriend wants to opportunistically cash in on her severe misfortune by selling the rights of the whole sordid affair to a tabloid TV show. Meanwhile, the guilt-ridden Ray pretends to be a sympathetic stranger and befriends Tanya so she will forgive him for being indirectly responsible for her current dismal predicament. Director/producer/co-screenwriter Jim Sikora's creepy and quietly unnerving film noirish tale about how even the most seemingly petty and meager of actions can perpetuate shockingly harsh consequences explores the themes of fate, conscience, loneliness and redemption with genuinely disturbing and provocative results. Sikora's fiercely stark, no-frills, weirdly timeless every-minute-counts efficient style, ably aided by the steely black and white cinematography, a skittish jazz score, a deliberately slow pace, the low-key, splendidly naturalistic performances, and a totally credible and meticulously detailed evocation of grindingly banal day-to-day pedestrian life, lends a startling conviction and rigid, ruthlessly unsparing austerity to the frightfully believable story, thus making this tautly focused and unmercifully icy indie feature a most praiseworthy effort.