Knock ‘Em Dead, Kid (2009/On-Line Distribution Feature Review)
Starring
Dirk Julien, Michael Resendez, Torey Marks, Erin Prieto, Chad Post
Directed
by Christopher Golon
Review by
Nicholas Sheffo
Critic’s
Rating: 6 out of 10
As the
industry tries to make more out of digital video, many people who would
otherwise not be making features do with digital low and high def
equipment. In most cases, they are just heartless package deals that
should have never been made, but having that sudden hit is like a “gold rush”,
though when the work is bad, it is more like playing a national lottery.
But sometimes, something interesting comes along that is different enough to
look at and Christopher L. Golon’s low-budget Knock ‘Em Dead, Kid (2009) is one such project.
The film
is about a group of friends who decide that they should go after a young man
their age who a female friend seriously accuses of rape and sexual
assault. They take her word for it without investigation and attack the
young man in an action that will ruin their summer and then some. Bret
(Dirk Julian) intends to go to college, so this will be the last summer with
his group for a while, but they should have made other plans.
Golon’s
second feature is a mixed bag, with some things we have seen before in what is
essentially a teen movie, but Kids
and Bully this is not. The
teens are still more realistic than most of what Hollywood gives us in bad comedies or phony
feel-good films, but the violence is ironically the weak point here. It
is badly staged, edited and has very limited impact, sabotaging the credibility
of the storyline. What is interesting and does work is the character
interaction and the way they communicate.
Especially
in the conversations between the buddies, it is hard to tell whether it is
scripted or improvised, which is not an easy thing to do. When Golon gets
this aspect of things working, this becomes cinematic and creates its own
conversational space that is distinct and if he could expand this, make him a
distinct filmmaker. This was shot on MiniDV (low definition digital
video) and is not as shaky as most such projects, which is another plus to his
credit.
As well,
there seems to be more to show and it was later confirmed that the screenplay
was much longer, but had to be cut down because of the budget. That is a
shame, because an expanded version of this would be very interesting to
see. The acting itself is not bad, but works best when it falls into the
style of talk already explained. This was an ambitious project, especially
considering the circumstances and is worth a look.
You can
see for yourself by visiting link:
http://www.amazon.com/Knock-Em-Dead-Kid/dp/B002ORZS4K
