Do not make any decision when you’re mad or sad. Which is exactly what Richie (Shawn Christensen) don’t do. Still mourning by the death of his girlfriend, he found a dead beautiful woman in the night club bathroom where he works. Owed big time to his boss, Bill (Ron Perlman), Richie accept the fact that he must keep this incident a secret, considering it would get the club a bad reputation. Drowned in his sorrow, Richie already attempted a suicide when he get a call from his estranged big sister, Maggie (Emmy Rossum). He is forced to postpone his further suicidal action because Maggie begged her to look for her smart and A-student daughter, Sophia (Fatima Ptacek).
The night goes further, it seems Richie’s uncle duty takes longer than he thinks. His second attempt to suicide also unsuccessful. When a strange woman comes looking for Maggie, Maggie ordered Richie to take Sophia away from their apartment. Maggie had just found out that the strange woman is the wife of the man she sleeps with and punched her face, and made her in jail. She couldn’t go out until 4 am in the morning. Meanwhile, Richie refuses when Sophia wants them to come to his apartment, so he takes her to his friend’s night club instead. The friend, Gideon (Paul Wesley), a club owner with power, shares that he’s very much in love with a woman and asks Richie if he knows where she is. The woman is the same one Richie found dead in his working place. Which makes Richie in a difficult place, he’s not up for lying but he promised he’ll keep this a secret to his boss.
Sophia looks like a tough independent teen girl, but when Richie left her for a few moments outside the night club, she starts to cry. Richie apologize, and explained that he’s actually taking a comic book he wrote when he and Maggie was a kid. The comic book is about a girl named Sophia who still survived after all of the accidents happened to her. The same name of his comic character and Maggie’s daughter makes Richie thinks Sophia is named after the character. The rest of the night, Richie gets a tighter bond with his niece, the same moment with temptation to die, the effect of the wrong drug he took and his problem with Gideon, playing with his mind.
“Just want to get you back home safe. Just want to do one thing right.”
The movie was adapted from Curfew, a short film who won Oscar last year for short action movie, it also directed and written by Shawn Christensen. Christensen also written and performed the soundtrack, Sophia So Far by the name Goodnight Radio, which I love. Christensen is a musician as well, a frontman of the band Stellastarr. I got the feeling that I might love all the soundtracks of the movies he’ll direct in the future.
If you had read my blog a while, you probably know I usually fall for movies with the music I love too. Since indie music is one of them, I fall to this one easy. One particular scene, when Sophia danced to the song Sophia So Far is the best scene for me, one of the best music moments I’ve seen all time. I think many of the movie’s interlude was fashioned by songs, and you can tell that Christensen is a fan of music.
The movie isn’t perfect. It deals with the challenge to adapt a short movie to a feature one, to make the movie stretched to one hour or more but still excites you to see it to the very end. I haven’t seen Curfew, but I guessed that it must be more condensed and effective. Added with actress Fatima Ptacek still so adorable in her younger age. But Fatima Ptacek should do more drama films, out of her Dora the Explorer zone, as she showed promise.
But I still loved the movie. Of course, Richie and Gideon are actually two mellow bad boys, and the movie could be cut shorter. But it deals with survival, narcotics and family themes under the dark and hipster tone. It brought the topic on how siblings were close when they were kids but grew apart. The moral of the story I got was to not take a shortcut when life kicks you hard. And, how you should never underestimate the family bond. Under all the depression look, there’s humor slipped between Richie’s depressed hallucinated mind and troubled world. Richie’s lost condition is a contrast to Sophia’s neat and togetherness, and youth. But still they both can connect and proven why they have the same blood. The chemistry worked perfect between this uncle and niece.
Surely, there’s a bigger reason why Richie failed to attempt suicide several times. Why? You should check the movie yourself. Christensen showed a big potential, and I’ll be looking for his next film.
Final Score :
