THREAT

THREAT

Narrator Jim (Carlos Puga, BILLY528) is a homeless young punk who divides his time living on the streets of Washington DC, and on the bedroom floors of friends and casual girlfriends.

His life consists largely of sleeping with an upper-class teen who he believes is seeing him purely to mortify her well-to-do parents. Having said that, the parents look upon Jim as a charity case and at least feed him well whenever they can.

But Jim doesn't care much for such handouts, and prefers a good chat (read: moan) to even sex. Hence, he dumps the wealthy teen.

Jim is one of America's disaffected youth, in touch with the fact that when we die we turn to dust and no-one will remember - or care about - what we leave behind.

He enjoys sharing his bleak philosophies with his friend, hip-hop fan Fred (Keith Middleton, THE LAST NEW YORKER). Fred has a slightly different outlook on life. He sees the shit around them in their everyday life, but is a little more optimistic about there being a light at the end of the tunnel. He, after all, has a job, a girl and a young child to consider. Fred believes hatred is the strongest energy, and it will take an outburst of hate to overthrow the system as it stands, making way for a new, fairer regime.

When not sleeping rough or jousting verbally on the street steps with Fred, Jim flirts loosely with a gang of 'straight-edge' punks who have little better to do than beat the crap out of drunks they spy getting behind the wheels of cars.

Told over the course of several consecutive days, THREAT ultimately presents a series of vignettes that introduce a bunch of disparate street corner-dwelling kids, until it all leads to a night of violence that breaks out when they're all brought together at a hardcore gig.

It's tough to offer a more reliable synopsis than the one above. THREAT doesn't really have a storyline per se, just a lot of skits that offer the musings of kids with nothing to do and nothing to look forward to. It's like a more pessimistic version of CLERKS, or a punk-edged variation on the futility of Larry Clark's KIDS.

What THREAT lacks is any real direction. Okay, I fully understand that it's an insight into a generation of aimless youths who wile away their empty days by questioning the importance of morality, and are prone to wondering aloud how many Americans were only pissed off about the Twin Towers attack because they wish they'd thought of doing it first. But that's all they do.

Kate Nisa and director Matt Pizzolo's script revels in empathising the monotony of disenchanted youth - but it soon becomes boring to watch. What we get is simply a host of badly phrased "philosophies" that in the long run make us detest these opinionated, self-righteous kids for boring us with their "shocking" beliefs.

I mean, come on, could anyone really tolerate being in the company of someone so anti-fun and sanctimonious as Jim?!

Where THREAT fails is in it's heavy-handed portrayal of these social pariahs, imposing their short-sighted views on life, death, sex, mortality, race, religion - everything, in fact - with tedious frequency and little impact. Who cares if a character refuses to use condoms during sex, preferring instead to spread HIV? It's a sad reflection of our times that things like that just aren't shocking anymore.

THREAT can boast decent performances, some keen editing, and the occasional visual flourishes from Pizzolo. The film is shot on varying stock, so looks grainy and effectively documentary-style at times, then polished and slick at others. A lot of the film is shot in black and white too, adding a little more interest to the visual presentation.

The soundtrack, by various hardcore DJs including Alec Empire, is noteworthy too. Oh, and the finale - while not as grim as it's filmmakers probably imagined it to be - is well choreographed and edited, making the experience feel worthwhile at long last.

THREAT is basically a competently made low-budget flick from a bunch of promising young filmmakers (all either in their teens or early 20s) known collectively as Kings Mob. On a technical level, it's an accomplished work. In terms of theme, it's naive and idealistic in a manner that betrays the age of its writers.

The film is presented uncut in it's original 1.85:1 ratio, looking relatively bright and sharp in this non-anamorphic transfer. As mentioned above, various types of film have been used to shoot THREAT, so when it looks rough and grainy, it's meant to.

The English 2.0 soundtrack is similarly fine.

Extras include the option of watching the film with two alternative soundtracks, offering musical scores specially edited to flow with the film sans dialogue. The first (and best) is from Alec Empire, while the second is brought to you by Enduser.

Elsewhere we have a Making Of featurette, which is basically on-location footage with a host of bloopers from the young, jovial cast. Deleted scenes and alternate takes are incorporated into this footage too.

Finally, there are four trailers that were released at different stages of the film's production as adverts for further financing. These are successful in highlighting the punchier scenes of the film.

An interesting if flawed piece of independent cinema that aims to speak up for the disaffected youth of America. Enjoyable, but only if you can stomach the barrage of theoretical shite the writers must genuinely believe teenagers speak these days.

Review by Stu Willis


 
Released by Threat
Region All - NTSC
Not Rated
Extras :
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