MESKADA (2010) (a review)
An indy crime movie that focuses on more than just the crime and the cops. Stars" Nick Stahl (T3), Kellan Lutz (Twilight, Immortals, 90210), Rachel Nichols (GI Joe, Conan the Barbarian), Jonathan Tucker. Written and directed by Josh Sternfeld.
The story: A boy in an affluent town is murdered during a robbery. The detective suspects the murderer came from an adjascent town where people are struggling to find work. Complicating matters, the town (Caswell) is also trying to get a large corporation to move in which would mean hundreds of jubs and save the town.
Was it good?
Sort of. There is a lot of good and a lot of bad. Overall the acting is okay. What works best is the approach -- the focus on these two towns, one affluent and one struggling. Unfortunately, we don't get enough of that. All of it needed to be developed in a more powerful way. For instance, there is a scene (a very good one) where two people from Caswell are presenting their plan to the commissioner's office. However, the meeting doesn't go well. You see, the mother of the dead boy was a County Commissioner. It's a great scene that works because there are so many threads tangled together -- the town wants the jobs but it's a small town that doesn't like the police coming in and is stilling to protect its own, but then the mother of the murdered child is on the commission and it is clear they are not happy with the town and are ready to punish them by denying them the money for infrastructure they need to bring the corporation to their town. Because of this it spins everything with the town -- they want to protect themselves, but they need to find the killer, but they also lash out at the police blaming them for bringing the town under suspicion. It's great stuff. Unfortunately, it isn't set up nearly as strongly as it should have been. We don't know enough about the town, we don't have a good enough feel for the characters yet. They say the town will die without the company jobs, but that feeling just isn't there yet.
It's a problem that is grounded in the first act, where they show the murder of the boy and then focus on the two men responsible going back to their town and the detective who will try to track them down. Nothing is particularly bad about it, but it doesn't lay the ground work that is needed for later on -- namely the town's need for those jobs. What the movie needed was to move away from the structural of a procedural and focus more on the conflict between these two towns -- one affluent, one struggling.
As it is, the movie is okay, but it could have been something special. There's just too much that we have seen before, too much that isn't gripping. And as a detective story, the actual detective work is pretty boring. It needs more conflict within the small town -- the characters should each embody a philosophy that put them at odds with each other (one person is for the jobs, one person against an outside company coming into their town, one person wants to help the police find the people that murdered those boys, one person doesn't care about someone from that town getting killed, etc). This is important because you need to be able to explore the small town mindset in a clear way with as few people as possible and having the people each embody a different attitude will do that. Unfortunately, while interesting it never really reaches the dramatic heights that it could.
It's still a movie worth watching. It's a movie that tries to do much more than most crime stories and definitely has some interesting moments. It just also has stretches where you can safely go make a snack without missing anything. I wouldn't recommend it for theatrical, but if you are in the mood for something a little different, something that tries to do a little more, it's worth a rent.
*** RENTAL ***
