DUST UP

Jack (Aaron Gaffey) lives out of a silver mobile home in the cactus-strewn deserts of America. He lives a quiet life with his Indian companion Mo (Devin Barry), contemplating yoga and exercising his spirit as much as his body in the great outdoors.

Not so far away, hot new mother Ella (Amber Benson) is horrified to turn on the taps in her home and be showered in brown "mud crap". We later establish that it is indeed mud, and not crap. Still, she needs a plumber to tend to the problem; she rings a number, and Jack answers.

Yes, Jack – complete with his steely presence and no-shit eye-patch – is a plumber when not indulging in metaphysical exercises in the wild.

Now, at this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is all sounding like the synopsis to a run-of-the-mill 70s porn short. But no, it transpires that Jack is actually a former hitman who’s turned his back on that violent lifestyle due to an act of hideous goriness which we only gather in piecemeal flashback segments during the course of the film.

It turns out that Ella and her baby daughter Lucy have it so bad because of Ella’s partner Herman (Travis Betz), who’s a likeable buffoon that’s let his drug habit drag him into owing a debt to local villain Buzz (Jeremiah Birkett).

For reasons best known to himself – initially, anyway – Jack offers to add a portion of Herman’s debt to his plumbing bill … and then drives the hapless hippy out to Buzz’s desert bar in a bid to settle the score once and for all.

There, they meet Buzz (in jovial mood, having just bummed a male client) and his oversized henchman Mr Lizard (Al Burke). The night takes a dark turn when Herman reveals to Buzz that he can’t pay his debt in full just yet. This leads to more threats, a huge bar brawl and Herman having to later admit that he’d shat himself somewhere along the line.

No real conclusion emerges from said scuffling, then. Instead, the boys – Herman, Jack and Mo – retreat back to Ella’s house in a bid to lick their wounds. She’s rightfully concerned that Herman can’t protect her family from the threat of Buzz (an apparent homosexual cannibal – now there’s a cinematic rarity). But, of course, her suggestion of ringing the local sheriff (Ezra Buzzington) for help carries little weight: he’s living in Buzz’s pocket. Until, that is, Buzz snuffs him out too.

With no law enforcement to support them and seemingly existing in the middle of nowhere, it transpires that Jack must protect his newly acquired family against the incoming threat of Buzz and his crazed cohorts.

The press release for DUST UP bills it as a "hot new genre: grindhouse Western". Hmm. It certainly owes massively to the Western genre despite being set in modern times, and definitely panders to the conventions of the grindhouse. But I see no new genre here, just an opportunist take on the genre-blending faux-grindhouse conveniences popularised by Tarantino and Rodriguez over the last decade.

Still, DUST UP does up its ante and become quite engaging in its second half. I mean, I’d pretty much written it off completely during the episodic first 15 minutes – but then a semblance of a plot kicks in, and writer-director Ward Roberts somewhat forgets his style-over-content excesses.

A lot of the comedy is still of an acquired taste (not mine), and there’s a campiness to some scenes that’s at total loggerheads with the darker moments on offer, but overall this did pick up and maintain momentum with decent performances and attractive photography helping it out along the way.

I won’t remember it in a fortnight though, which is possibly the most damning or telling thing I could say about DUST UP.

The film comes in an uncut transfer which preserves its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, enhancing it for 16x9 televisions. While there is some softness and over-exposure on occasion, the bulk of this picture presentation can be said to be sharp, colourful and clean.

English audio is provided in a suitably rousing 5.1 mix, the best use of which comes during those moments where the shit-kicking Western-tinged rock soundtrack steps in.

The screener disc provided by Breaking Glass Pictures didn’t offer any extra features or even menu pages.

However, I can reveal that the retail disc will come equipped with a plethora of bonus goodies: behind-the-scenes featurette "Find the Pony"; interviews and footage compiled during the making of the film; a tongue-in-cheek Public Service Announcement relating to the film; feature-length director’s audio commentary track; footage of the film’s positive reception when it screened at the San Diego Comic Con; "much more!" …

I didn’t get DUST UP initially. It starts badly but improves, and is certainly better on a second watch. I don’t think it’s memorable enough to avoid long-term obscurity but, at the same time, it’s not a ‘bad’ film.

Review by Stuart Willis