I hadn't heard a single peep about this film. Not a word, and now it has a good review. So let's hear more, what else do you people know?
MEMORANDUM
FROM: ALISTAIR MACLEAN
TO: HARRY, CHIEF OF DETECTIVES
AM checking in again with a test screening review of a little pic I'd heard nothing of called LESSER EVIL. Screening tonight was a very interesting experience. Sensing bad juju for this pic, though. More on that later.
Backing up.
Made over a dozen NRG heavies scattered throughout. Slipped by them easily enough. Dumb, meddling bastards. Things very tense. The suits out in force. Nobody else in the audience had heard of this flick, so no expectations.
The film starts. And happiness fills my stone-hardened heart. This little film is a gem. A really nice piece of work. This can't be a studio film.
THE PLOT: Four high school buddies in a small town accidently kill a man (a baddie who no one will grieve over.) Panicing, the guys dump the body and his car over a cliff and go their separate ways. Then, 15 or 20 years later, the car is accidentally discovered along with the body and a police investigation begins. Feeling the walls closing in on them, the four get together at a cabin in the woods to try and work the matter out themselves and before long, all of them are at each other's throats and allegiances are being contstantly made and broken. Re-made and re-broken.
Not a completely origonal plot, but a interesting take on the concept. The story is told through numerous flashbacks, a concept I usually find annoying and cliched, but here it was handled almost invisibly. Ending is kind of predictable, but handled with enough style that you don't really care. Really dug the whole effort.
NOTE TO ALL CASTING DIRECTORS: This is how to cast a movie where a young actor has to match up to an adult actor. The teenage actors actually look like their adult counterparts and one could walk into this film in the middle and pick out who the young Tony Goldwyn is, who the young Arlis Howard is, who the young David Paymer is. Nice performances by everyone. Especially Arlis Howard.
Bottom line is that this film came from nowhere and took me by surprise. A nice surprise at that.
Bad juju, though. Fear seizes my heart that the suits might take this film away from the whoever did it and cut their own version.
NOTE TO SUITS: If you touch this, you will fuck it up. It's fine. Leave it.
Would say more, but don't want to spoil anything. This isn't a great film, but it is a good one and one that is refreshing to see. The type of film that will probably get dumped in limited release then shot to video, but it would be a shame not to get to see it on the big screen.
It ain't WHERE EAGLES DARE, but it's a nice piece of work.
Respectfully submitted,
Alistair Maclean
