Owen (Mark Kochanowicz), a web designer in Philadelphia, who is looking to make more money, responds to a newspaper advertisement for a web designer. Upon interviewing for the job, he finds he can make three times as much as his current job. Therefore, he gives notice, leaving his employer of four years, on good terms. Before going, he asks Halina (Haley March), his former boss’s daughter, if she would meet him and his friend at a bar later that night.
Halina meets up with Owen at the bar and gets a chance to meet his friend James (Atif Rahim Lanier), who is a Philly cop. As the night wears on, Owen recounts his excitement about the new job, but expresses some confusion that it is in the warehouse district of Philadelphia. He soon forgets his concerns as he focuses on getting to know Halina, whom he’s secretly had a crush on for years, and who seems to like him. As he walks her to her car at the end of the night, she encourages him to ask her out, which he gratefully does. He then asks her if he may pick her up from the airport when she returns from an upcoming business trip in Europe. She agrees, they say goodnight, and she drives off into the night.
The next day, he begins his new job at the internet startup company. They appear to be selling photos on the internet, but the photos sell for a strangely high sum of money. Owen cannot keep from snooping into the mystery of why people are buying these pictures, and he uncovers a web of deceit and lies that could end his life.
Content
As a first film, there are many strong parts in Pixel Perfect. Chief amongst them is that there is an actual mystery surrounding his job, which creates the audience’s interest to discover it. Once the hook is set, your curiosity is truly piqued, which speaks to intelligent plot development.
Of course, there are also some weak parts in Pixel Perfect. Because this was a first film in which the director is starring as the main character, the acting felt a bit shaky, especially at the beginning. It can be very difficult to try to direct as well as ensure all the performances are coming together, while simultaneously trying to concentrate on acting as the main character. I know this, because I made the same choice to direct and star in my first film. While this type of crossover can work for extremely experienced film actors who cross into directing, it tends to be a difficult endeavor for everyone else.
The actors had a tendency to mumble a bit too much and the dialogue, which was doubtless crafted to mirror real speech, walked the line between feeling real and feeling badly memorized, due to sporadic starts, pauses, and the like. My recommendation for future films is to sacrifice some of the realism of “Umms” and “errrs” for a more concise delivery, as film is a representative art, rather than a realistic art. A few stammers in key places do a very good job of conveying the point of uncertainty, worry, or shyness without undermining the actors’ delivery. (Additional editing can refine some of these issues, as is covered later in the “Visual Look” section.)
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
The hook in this movie is intriguing and the overall ending makes sense, but there are some issues.
I will try to keep the spoilers here as brief as possible, in order to deal with the pertinent issues. As Owen suspects, the company he is working for is involved in a criminal enterprise, with all the other employees aware of the enterprise except himself. Now this might make sense, if Owen was a specialized person, like a lawyer or accountant. However, there is another web designer besides Owen, who is fully aware of the criminal activities. The criminal enterprise is clearly too simple for them to need two web designers, so it doesn’t make sense that they would bring in an outsider who could grow suspicious, when they could clearly do it with their own people.
The other issue is that the overall growth of the main character is rather minimal. He survives and we get the concept of the “grass not being greener on the other side,” which Owen’s former boss voiced in the first two minutes of the film, but there is not much other growth in him. Combined with an anti-climactic ending for the villains of the piece, it leaves the viewer feeling strangely unsatisfied. Although, they do throw in a nice ending joke, regarding the villains’ continuing schemes, which makes you smile.
