When Mickey Lewis takes a painting job he could not have known that it would lead to a passionate affair with the house's owner, Katrina Webb, and to murder...

1 in the Gun (2010 - 1 hr, 34 min, 12 sec) is an ambitious noir surreal thriller, written and directed by Rolfe Kanefsky.

Now, it's good that movies should aim high and this one certainly does with its labyrinthine plot involving murder and madness.

The movie opens with Mickey involved in a killing. When he returns to rescue Katrina, she reminds him of the first time they met. Flash back a week and proposes that out of work painter, Mickey, paint her front porch and in every way this proposal is as sleazy as it sounds. When husband, Arthur, leaves for a business trip things are set to get steamy and the pair decide to bump off the husband. But poor Mickey does not spot the double and triple crosses until he shoots and kills Katrina.

But does he? The film takes a marked turn into a magical mystery land as Mickey finds himself adrift in a bar, apparently miles away from civilisation and reality. As weird piles upon weird we, like Mickey, start to question what is real or what is in Mickey’s mind.

The film shoots high for concept but falls foul of poor acting and some very poor dialogue. Steve Man never really gels as Mickey, certainly not enough for you to empathise with him. Likewise Katherine Randolph, as Katrina, would appear on her looks to be a perfect femme fatal, but like Man the dialogue lets her down. The supporting cast are generally good, but still too much time has been spent on the concept and not enough on the dialogue.

The film is generally well directed, though the DV look does the film little favours. The disc is presented with an English DD 2.0 audio and a 2.23:1 letterbox picture. The disc supplied was only a screener, but the PR blurb says that the final disc will sport a DD 5.1 audio track and a decent set of extras.

It’s not awful, but you do watch it thinking it could have been so much more with a bigger budget. If you liked the twists in films like Memento and The Usual Suspects and especially if you’re a David Lynch fan then it might be worth checking the film out.

5

Charles Packer