Welcome back to another installment of SHORT FILM
SPOTLIGHT, where we highlight some of the best short films out there.
This week, we take a look at the very first film of popular director
Edgar Wright…DEAD RIGHT!
Dead Right is the
first film from writer/director Edgar Wright and, much like his second entry in
the Cornetto Trilogy Hot Fuzz, it is
a parody buddy-cop thriller. Wright made this with his friends and a number of
other people he was connected with when he was just 18 years old. The film
features a cast of 70 actors who are predominantly amateurs and Wright did
basically all of the production work otherwise.
This paragraph is a preface that people need to understand
as I review this short film. This is not a professional movie by any sense of
the imagination and just as I wouldn’t feel right reviewing and scoring
someone’s home videos, I almost don’t here either. The cinematography is
shoddy, the effects are incredibly poor, and the acting is mostly terrible.
From the basic respects that I look at film, it is very hard for me to grade
this on the same scale because it isn’t at that level. Even in his introduction
to the film, Wright said that this is a poorly made film that a viewer will not
likely enjoy. The reason I am reviewing it is because I think there is
something interesting in here about a good filmmaker.
Edgar Wright’s cop movies, Dead Right and Hot Fuzz,
very clearly share a central thread. Wright has a real interest in doing the
British version of an over-the-top American cop movie. It is fascinating to see
the ways in which his vast knowledge of movies and his life in Britain have
coalesced into these two films that somehow manage to both work and have
interesting cross cultural connection. This is primarily what works in Dead Right. You can feel the essence of
this idea coming out of the film as it follows a lot of the typical American
cop movie tropes but still feels fundamentally British.
Additionally, I think you see the very early development of
Edgar Wright’s editing skills in here. The cuts are not nearly as quick and
precise as they are today (nor are they accompanied with the signature sound
effects), but they are eye-catching and clearly show the genesis of the
brilliance we see today. The film also has a few funny moments that will put
the occasional smile on a viewer’s face.
That’s about the end of the positives though. This is a film
that Wright and his friends can look back on fondly and film nerds can look at
in exploring how Edgar Wright became “Edgar Wright.” The film is bad in pretty
much every technical and performance based aspect but it remains interesting
nonetheless.
Ryan’s Score: 2/10
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