Dennis Hauck's Too Late begins in the Hollywood Hills, where a young woman, Dorothy, is murdered minutes before Private investigator Mel Sampson arrives the scene. A stripper who accidentally stumbled into the shady practices of her boss, Dorthy has recruited Mel Sampson, who attempted but ultimately failed to keep her safe. From the very beginning of Too Late it's apparent that Dennis Hauck isn't going to let the film's low budget affect Too Late's ambitious style and structure. Too Late is a film that feels like a dark love letter to Los Angeles, a neo-noir of sorts, that combines extravagant tracking shots, long takes and a few carefully timed zoom-in and zoom-outs to create an immersive experience, at times feeling very reminiscent of De Palma's thrillers. While the style of the film is impressive, given the budget restraints, Too Late's most fascinating aspect is its structure, which is told completely out of a sequence, jumping across the timeline of this dark tale between a low-life private detective and the woman he failed to save. While feeling a little gimmicky at first, this non-linear structure quickly becomes endearing and essentially, as Hauck's screenplay forces the viewer to pay attention to small details, something that is essentially to effectively piece the story together. John Hawkes, as always, gives a great performance as Mel Sampson, an alcoholic and loner, who clearly doesn't have his life together. This non-linear structure serves his character's arch extremely well, dropping a relatively big surprise towards the end of the film that works extremely well thanks to the shattered narrative. While the structure and style of the film are impressive, I'd be re missed if I didn't mention how hit-and-miss the screenplay of Too Late can be at times, with some fantastic lines and clever quips but also some that feel forced, like the rampant misogyny running throughout the narrative that's trying too hard, in an attempt to give the film a hard-boiled noir sensibility. With a structure just as shattered and complex as Mel Sampson's life, Dennis Hauck's Too Late is a clever and engaging first feature that is a solid calling card for the first-time filmmaker.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|