Synopsis
Raymond, a young private investigator specialising in divorce, gets too ambitious and takes on a case that involves more than just snapping pictures of cheating couples. While searching for the estranged daughter of a client, he discovers that she works as a stripper under the name Natalie Cottontail. Natalie’s exploits bring together a desperate collection of lost souls sucking everyone down a drain of despair. (Executive Producer Michael Madsen)
Review
I'm trying to remember the last time I watched what I would call a proper detective movie, I'm drawing a blank. The Dirty Kind certainly manages to resurrect a style I haven't seen in quite some time.
A senator gets himself in hot water when the girl he's seeing on the side tells him she's pregnant. Knowing this could spell disaster for his career and home life he hires someone to encourage her to make the right decision.
Private investigator Raymond is hired to look into a missing person case. As he starts to dig into the life of the missing girl he realises that something much more sinister has happened to her.
I was pleased to get the chance to see this. I will happily watch almost any movie (as my cinema going habits will attest to), but this probably wouldn't have been something I would have picked up as I scrolled through Amazon Video listings due to my atrocious watching habits on streaming services.
The Dirty Kind really does catch the essence of noir detective films, it gave me a surprisingly nostalgic feeling while I watched. It was genuinely a feeling I haven't got from many films recently.
I'm going to guess that none of us have heard of any of the cast in this but I've got my fingers crossed that some of them appear in more films. Raymond Cain, our PI, is played by Duke Williams. Williams manages to capture the exact tone that was needed and he felt like the perfect fit for the character. The main villain is Mickey McElroy played by John Mertens. A fair bit of his role involves switching between being a good guy and a bad guy and he handled the transitions so well. There's an interesting dynamic between him and his criminal counterparts too, particularly John (Ed Glynn) who doesn't seem like the criminal type in all honesty. I would have liked to have seen more of his story.
In fact, I would have liked to have seen more about a few of the characters as well as some of the situations that pop up. More than once I found myself a little lost because of a jump in the story. It wasn't always easy to follow the passing of time. There's one scene in particular that as I watched I thought was a continuity error, characters have switched seats in a car, but it's actually happening after an off-screen event. The editing of the two scenes together was so smooth that I didn't realise there'd been a change.
The way everything was shot really backed up the noir aspect. I know nothing about the technical side of this so I'm not even going to try, but the tone over the whole film was just right. Something that struck me as I watched was that a lot of the shots felt like they were framed like a graphic novel. Again, it's not something I have enough knowledge in to know whether that's a "thing" or not, but I liked it. Extreme close-up to push the anxiety of the moment, focusing on a detail of a scene with the character mainly out of shot (it was disgusting but I liked it artistically speaking) and a long shot with external people walking in and out of view... it all felt very well composed.
Scenes were also bolstered with some brilliant music. What I loved most were the blues tracks by Nathan Gunn. They were an excellent choice and matched the atmosphere exactly.
I have seen movies that had millions of dollars spent on them that truly felt like a waste of my time, they took an idea and executed everything badly... The Dirty Kind had a budget of $5,000, was filmed in 9 days and came out the other end with a film that captures things that I haven't seen on screen in ages. Vilan Trub wrote, directed and produced The Dirty Kind, as well as being cinematographer... If that's not dedication I don't know what is. This just goes to show you that belief and passion in a project are key. Sure, truckloads of money would be good too but it doesn't always help.
The Dirty Kind is coming to Amazon Video in the UK on Friday 13th September.
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