Predicament

This review is a bit old, seeing as I watched the film on Sunday, but I was a bit too busy with other things to get around to it. Either way this is my first (out of three) reviews from films I will be watching at the New Zealand Film Festival.

And what a way to start. Predicament is the new film from director Jason Stutter (Tongan Ninja, Diagnosis Death), making his first "real feature", collaborating yet again with Jemaine Clement, who is such a New Zealand icon he needs no introduction. The film also stars Heath Franklin ("Chopper Reid"), Tim Finn (musician from Split Enz and the Finn Brothers), and first-time film actor Hayden Frost.

Predicament is an adaptation of a New Zealand crime novel of the same title by Ronald Hugh Morrison, and it is a visually stunning dark comedy about student Cedric Williamson (Hayden Frost), who is a scrawny loner, and sometimes slips into fantasises about his dream girl. He is then unsuspectingly used by black-mailer Mervyn "Merv" Toebeck (Franklin), as an alibi for the "suicide" of his father. Merv pretends to be distraught so he can crash at the ill-kept mansion that Cedric lives at with his grand-mother, and insane father (Tim Finn), who is building a giant tower to heaven to see his dead wife. Soon Merv has brung in his friend Spook (Jemaine), and they decide to rope Cedric into a blackmailing scheme, where they take images of men having affairs at the local club. Cedric goes along with their plan, trying to get back at the Bramwell family, who swindled his family out of land.

Unfortunately things don't go to plan with their plan as Cedric, torn by guilt, decides to tell their mark, who was poorer than they expected, about the fact they had no camera, only the flash bulb. After a little bit of persuasion they find Blair Bramwell, the spoiled son, sneaking off with his step-mother. Spook screws up the plan, and suddenly the police are on their tail.

In a lot of ways this is essentially a Coen Brothers-esque film set in New Zealand. A lot of the dark comedy parts in the film clearly owed a lot to their films, but to call it that would be dismissive. After watching the New Zealand TV series "This is Not My Life", I was shocked at the poor quality of television in New Zealand. This however, along with "I'm not Harry Jenson", is showing that our film industry is on the rise. The comedy, though borrowing from the Coens, is very much in the New Zealand style that has been developing recently. Clement is, as always, hilarious in his slightly off-kilter way, showing his skill at comic timing. Franklin is very good as the boorish bludger Merv, and Frost shows very good skill at playing the awkward teenager.

The cinematography is very good, if a little showy, with quite a few crane shots, and a general sense of polish that really helped to sell the film. The art direction is where the film really succeeds. Very ably re-creating 1930's New Zealand with an almost fairy-tail like brush, the set design adds a lot to the movie. The true show-piece of the set is the tower that Tim Finn's character is building throughout the film. A tower built out of every-day objects, it's haphazard nature makes for some very amusing sight gags, and general jokes made at the Williamsons' expense.

The end isn't the strongest around, and is very much a tonal shift from the rest of the film. It is very strange to have a dark comedy that ends on such a saccharine note, though it does sell it reasonably well. Stutter definitely showed potential as a "proper" director with his two other movies I have seen, but this really realises that promise into a film that is very strong.

I would give this a 4/5, a quite well-realised dark comedy. It loses points on the ending though, and a few minor issues that are ingrained into the movie. The other two films I will be reviewing are "Four Lions", a British comedy about a group of would-be terrorists, and "Cyrus", which is a Duplass brothers film starring John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill.