Hail
Director: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Cast: Daniel P. Jones, Leanne Letch
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Danny (Daniel P. Jones) was just released from prison and surprises his girlfriend Leanne (Leanne Letch) who is more than overjoyed that he is free again. They live through a short period of everything going right – with their relationship and Danny finding a job. But it all starts to crumble quickly and ends in quite a mess.

Hail is an artsy film, and if you heard artsy in a deragatory inflection, you heard in the tone I meant it. It’s boring, the camera work is annoying and it just tries way too hard to be deep.

I rather liked the beginning of the film, where it’s just about Danny getting back on his feet after prison. He and Leanne were really cute together [btw., Daniel P. Jones and Leanne Letch are amateur actors and basically played themselves] and reintegration after prison is a much too little explored topic that I personally find really interesting.

Unfortunately the camera work started to annoy me right from the start. Often, the faces of the actors were in close-up but not in focus and the camera moved around incessantly. I guess that’s supposed to be a metaphor for something. For me it was literally annoying.

And then the movie went on and on and on and nothing really happened at all. And I kept waiting for something – anything – to happen. But even when there were events, we never got to see the process, really, we only got to see the results of things. And that was frustrating and above all, boring.

It didn’t help either that I didn’t understand large parts of the dialogue because people were mumbling with a thick Australian accent. My English isn’t bad but it isn’t up for that task. At least the movie is short.

Summarizing: Frustrating and not worth it.