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Jason Lonsephine (Walter Banasiak) has a problem. He won't leave his childhood home of Portsville after his mother was killed there three years ago by crime lord Julio Perez (Harry Locke IV). This is a problem because he saw the face of Perez after the killing and can tie him to the crime. Julio's attempt to kill Jason was unsuccessful and he's lived in fear of the man getting his revenge. Oddly enough, he's been unwilling to kill Jason, so he's instead tried to buy out the local police force so that Jason can't bust him. While he's able to buy stoolies like Detective Adam Fuentes (Danny Grenchik), he's unable to buy Fuentes' partner, Officer Leonard Oliver (Mark Svalina).
When Julio's thugs start beating up Jason more regularly to try to get him to flee the town, he forms an unwanted alliance with Officer Oliver, who wants to bust Perez. Jason doesn't want the cop's help, due to the fact that he wishes to kill Perez for what he did for his mother, not get him arrested.
At the same time, Jason befriends Kat Taylor (Sarah Wartman), his next door neighbor, who encourages him to stop with his deathwish-style hunt for Julio and just leave town. In the end, Jason must decide what path he will take.
I really appreciated the hard work that these filmmakers put into this film, which was a labor of love across summer vacations for two years when they were on break from college. They're in a similar place to where I was with my first film. It's that place where you've exhausted yourself to make the film and some things work, but others do not and you're not sure what your own name is anymore, let alone why things don't work.
One of the big things that I noticed was the fact that this film had three directors who were also starring in different parts of the film. I'm sure this was chosen so that everyone could have a hand at directing and a hand at starring in a part of the film. Unfortunately, it damaged the narrative because there wasn't a clear directorial vision that carried throughout the film. As a director who has solo directed and co-directed myself, I really believe that the only time you should share directorial duties is if you're doing it with one other person in which each person's role is clearly defined ahead of time. (Any more than two directors leads to a group decision making process that is muddled at best and chaos incarnate at worst.) Successful pairings often include directors where one is very visual while the other is very actor oriented. (In these situations, it seems to almost always be brothers such as the Wachowski Brothers, the Cohen Brothers, and the Hughes Brothers.) In the film I co-directed, the original writer/director wanted to star in the film and realized that he couldn't do that and properly direct on set. As such, he rehearsed the actors ahead of time and oversaw post after, but I took the vision we had discussed and continued it in the actual production as the on-set director. For future endeavors, I would strongly encourage one member of this core group of friends to choose to be the director, while the other members choose other important roles that won't confuse the narrative. I've seen a number of troups who're currently doing this and have been very successful with it, as it allows everyone to grow, but doesn't muddy the water.
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