Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Six Shooter's Special

It's always a pleasure to discover a quality piece of independent cinema. There's just something infinitely more palatable about films that rely on content, creativetly, and that most ellusive intangible know as charm. And while 'Special' might not grab you as a masterpiece of cinema, it certainly posess these in spades, a well told story that reads on multiple levels.

The by-turns charming and stultifying Mark Rapaport stars as a comic book loving depressive who volunteers for an experimental drug aimed at 'feeling better'. The side effects iclude, you guessed it... super powers. Well, not really. But HE thinks they're real, and in his blundering attempts to fight crime inadvertantly draws heat from goons at the drug co. I guess a wigged out looney running around making the six o'clock news with your new psych-med's logo featured prominently on his 'super hero's outfit' is not good for business?

Relative newbys Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore deserve considerable credit not only for coming up with a slightly better-than-average plot device, but more importantly- for not totally biffing it up
. What really makes the film work, in fact, is the constently shifting perspective between the objective and inner realities, eventually we want to believe his side of things. To indulge this very human urge, to be more super.

Though I can't help but wonder how the film might have played without it's, a-hem.. star-power? M.Rapaport does a fine job, though he doesn't have the depth of acting that allows me to fully seperate him from previous roles. Especial his wonderful lead in 'Naked Man,' the similarly tripped-out comic-book-type tale (penned in part by Coen Bros. golden boy Ethan). A minor concern in a movie that grew on me as I watched it.