by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jackson Pace, Dylan Playfair, John Way, Gregg Henry, Jamie Lee, Sophia Ali, Cedric the Entertainer, Reno Wilson, Suzy Nakamura
Intro:
Amongst all the industry ribbing, this needed to succeed as a heist flick, and from the twists to the tense pacing to the fun interplay between the characters, this certainly accomplishes that.
Poor Greg Drowning, the debut feature of writer/director Jeffrey Scott Collins, was an odd movie. An American indie rom-com that played to the tropes and stereotypes of the genre so exactly that it was a bit rough to sit through, not helped by its sterile digital photography. Little did we know initially, but it was all about playing with expectations, with Collins gradually revealing a subversive side that ended up taking to task those very genre tropes.
With this follow-up, Above the Line, Collins puts that subversion front and center as he takes aim at an even bigger target: the Hollywood system itself. Its heist set-up feels like the next step for Inception and Soderbergh’s remake of Ocean’s Eleven, where the subtext of a heist crew being assembled, much like a film crew, is made into literal text. Six hard-done-by Hollywood creatives are brought together by a mysterious benefactor to sneak into the home of a bigwig producer and film bro final boss Jack Woodrow (Gregg Henry) and steal his six Best Picture Oscars which he humbly displays in his home.
Throughout this ragtag team’s bumbling and twisting trajectory over the course of a Christmas night (complete with copious Yuletide jingles across the soundtrack), the performers deliver the script’s more pointed remarks about the Hollywood system, the producer pedestal, and both #MeToo and post-#MeToo industry practices. Coming from an upstart filmmaker, it’s rather refreshing how not-bitter the film’s tone is overall. It recognises that those who get chewed up and spat back out, from John Way as the struggling actor Hero, to Jackson Pace and Dylan Playfair’s brother director duo, to Jamie Lee and Sophia Ali as two career women who saw the ugly side of La La Land first-hand, but Collins keeps it all tempered as genuine tribute to the trials of the cinematic grind, as opposed to coming across like he’s just mad that he didn’t get a seat at the table himself.
Although, with production values like this, he could be on his way anyway because the contrast between this and his debut are night and day. DP Garrett O’Brien’s visual framing balances the glitz and glamour of the region with the seedy underpinnings of the characters’ actions, and Joe Mitacek lands the twistier plot developments with his editing chops. Amongst all the industry ribbing, this needed to succeed as a heist flick, and from the twists to the tense pacing to the fun interplay between the characters, this certainly accomplishes that.
Above The Line is a film that critiques itself better than we ever could, and that works to its advantage. There’s enough righteous fire in its belly to make its decrying of the norms of American filmmaking hit the right painful notes, balanced out by its self-aware sense of humour. It’s a film about the ugly reality behind what gets films greenlit (or not), and its showcasing of the precise kind of whacko it takes to make it on the big screen is both depressingly accurate and inspirational in an oddball way.
