Normally, at the top of the list of things you don't associate with film noir would be "digital cinema" and "3-D." Perhaps shortly behind would be "comic book," but there are plenty of good noir-inspired comics. But when the Czar of Noir Eddie Muller blesses a film, you can bet it's noir.
Back in 2009 Thomas Jane made his directorial debut with this low budget (only a few million dollars) flick that sadly went straight to video in 2-D. But it was always meant for the big screen and 3-D, and last Friday night the Castro Theater gave it a proper showing, with Thomas Jane there to take questions first from Eddie Muller and then the audience.
The flick is set up as simple as can be--newlyweds (Thomas Jane and Lauren German) alone in a car driving through the desert at night. And then weird shit happens. And then things get weird. They get lost, roads dead end, double back on each other. It's all very Twilight Zone-ish, especially when they meet (and nearly run over) a survivor of a car crash. And, in fact, saying much more would be too much of a spoiler. The surprises were all the fun. In fact, you should find this movie but don't even read the credits in IMDb, there's too much of a spoiler there.
Afterwards, Eddie interviewed Thomas, and it's weird to remember that 2009 was really the infancy of digital 3-D. His team actually had to invent their own camera rig to shoot this, and they claimed (I can't confirm this, and it doesn't sound right to me) that this was the first 3-D film shot entirely on digital. Really interesting stuff.
And oh yeah, I made a reference above about this being a "comic book" film. Well, it's not based on an actual comic book, but on Thomas Jane's love of old noir comics. And, in fact, the comic book adaptation of the film will be coming out sometime soon.
Running Time: 88 minutes
My Total Minutes: 256,756
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