Title: The Dirty Kind
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Vilan Trub
Starring: Duke Williams, John Mertens, Ed Glynn
Runtime: 1 hr 25 minutes

What it is: A terrifying look at how it all goes wrong for a politician, two gangsters, a hooker and a private investigator who gets mixed up in it all. (IMDb)

What we think: The film is impressive given it’s less than a used vehicle budget. It claims for less than 5k the director/writer Vilan Trub was able to film, edit, and create a rather impressive attempt at a film of Reservoir Dogs/Swingers status. Its camera work is not so amateurish that one would regulate them to YouTube, though some of the close up’s kept the story from truly being understandable as one could not understand what lied beyond the camera.

Which one could argue is the point of the storyline, in which we therein find the wince factor. The film, for all its efforts to include people of color, does so while constantly reminding you that yes, there are Black and White people in the film, and they do not get along. From a hooker comically named Natalie Cottontail (Victoria Wallace) who never seems to gauge the severity of her predicament despite being in a questionable extra-marital affair with State Senator Lee Ziegler (Paul C Kelly), who himself seems to hold very little presence for a man of his stature, the film consistently pushes highly suspects scenes. While in a comedy, which I hoped it was a for a while, those things could be drawn back for comedic effect, but in a murder mystery, such gaping holes in the plot can draw the audience out and make them notice subtle problematic issues as if they were billboards. Such as a rape that occurred for seemingly no reason, without cause, in a public place, and seems to have been forgotten almost immediately after. No, in any age of cinema, rape should never be used as a scene fade into ambivalence, especially such a crude one.

Our Grade: D, The film is a solid example of Vilan Trub’s potential as a director, even if not so much his prowess as a writer. The scenes are filmed well, the sound is not terrible, and the acting is better than I have seen in films with higher budgets. But to ignore the film’s problematic storyline would be like calling a Cubic Zirconia the equivalence of a diamond. The movie dialogue is crude, as are the scenes, and not so much in technique. The storyline is as hard to follow as the repeated displays of clunky misogyny and racism (who knew that was even possible) that were used in an attempt to create an edgy story. Unfortunately, all it amounted to was a (hopefully) forgettable film.