User Reviews

Usher is the story of Ash, a young and inexperienced hit man, who just botched his latest "job".

As a result, the boss decides to take a break with the kid and tells him to "find a job to pay the rent." Ash does what a lot of people do. He gets a minimum wage job, working next to slackers and morons, and faces his toughest challenge, dealing with the public.

Ash, uses his hit man and tough guy training, keeping order at the theater, while keeping a close eye on the cute concessions stand girl.

The film has a lot in common with other low budget mob stories. The film stars many of the directors friends, and is set in a location he has access to. A historic movie theater. This backdrop however, is extremely grand and looks great on the big screen.

Unlike most new low budget movies like this, Usher is shot on Film, and it definitely shows. The production values are mostly all high and shooting on film, gives this one a better look than a lot of other indie movies.

I can't say enough good things about this film! This is more than your basic mob flick - it has intelligence, depth and morality.

The film is enveloped in various art mediums. The location of the film is visually spectacular; the Art Deco visage is full of opulent colors and shapes. The camera angles continue this dynamic. The score is impressive and matches the mood scene for scene.

The actors breathed life into the roles in which they were cast. The characters are engaging and complement each other. Each personality is so different from the next that you wouldn't think they had been written by one man. They are likable in their honestly - even the villain.

The storyline is simple and fairly straight forward - it doesn't twist, turn and double back on itself. But that isn't to imply that it is simplistic or predictable. Far from it! It is unexpected and refreshing.

As Scorsese once did for the lonely profession of chauffering passengers around town in Taxi Driver, director Roger Leatherwood selects another unsung job for his main character, whose serious issues, like Travis Bickle's, may or may not explode outwardly toward society - a movie theater usher.

Leatherwood decides not to use a first-person narration to make it easier for audiences to identify the problems raging in his main character's psyche, as Scorsese did, electing instead to let his main actor, Thomas Alexander, do the heavy lifting of winning audience sympathy for this outsider. (To use the French term, Alexander's "Ash" would definitely fit into "a bande apart.")

The parallels to Scorsese's film are uncanny. Like Bickle, Ash comes from a violent background that we never get many clues to. Both characters are jaded and unsure of themselves when trying to connect to normal life. Both characters feel they need to offer their protection to a female counterpart.

That protection ends in an orgy of violence in both films. And both directors step in front of the camera to offer words of wisdom to the main characters. (Though Leatherwood's theater manager role is a great deal larger than Scorsese's taxi passenger.)

The film looks good, is well-shot, and is better when dealing with the everyday disconnection of Ash with the world around him, than in later passages when action is required and the jumpy editing is so ragged that it undercuts a lot of cohesive structure. To be fair, the ending of Taxi Driver is classic in its structure and anyone would have a hard time topping it, but USHER comes up short just when it needs to show its fangs. Bickle's violence exploded and he was the pursuer, unable to control himself any longer, marching through the apartments with his well-honed military skills making him a truly frightening psychopath. In contrast, Ash becomes the pursued, which doesn't fit his character, running around, being chased, setting traps, and generally using his hit-man knowledge to elude and bait his pursuers, never losing control. Perhaps Ash needed to blow off a little of his steam.

Scorsese's masterful, final ironic twist of Bickle becoming a media hero is missing here. Ash's fate is left up to the viewer to decide and quite literally, we wonder if he has learned anything, or if the process will repeat itself when Ash finds his next job at a Burger King, or a Ralphs, or as...a taxi driver perhaps?