directed by:
Mark Hensley written by: Mark Daponte |
If I recall correctly, I've seen stuff from Mark Hensley before & I know this dude to be a reliable filmmaker, which is what I'm stickin' with because the title on this one would have not had me pickin' it up from the shelf back in the old video store days. So I'm goin' with reputation here, more than natural curiosity about a clown-based story. It's been a long, long time since that was the defining criteria of a movie I would want to seek out… I'm pretty sure all the way back to 1990's "Quick Change" with Bill Murray. So it's been at least a few…umm…well…decades since I've really tuned in for a clown-based movie, I guess?
Time to break the streak, I reckon! Hensley's "Clown N Out" tells the story of a dude named John who has fallen on hard times and starts doin' some serious criming. That's what a lot of folks that run the official schools for clowns don't tell you…If you don't make it to the big top, chances are you end up committing crimes to make ends meet instead of relishing all that good-good clown glory you were hoping for. While it's fair to say that within about the first fifteen minutes or so, I started to feel like I wasn't really going to break my streak after all - and that the clowning around was really going to be kept to a minimum…in many ways, I felt like that was probably going to be for the best in the long run in terms of what was going to retain my interest personally. So instead of laughing at the guy with the flower pin that squirts water or seeing tiny cars filled with thirty clowns, we're treated to spending time with John as he's out there attempting robberies, and Elaine, who seems all kinds of messed up. If I may be so bold, I gotta say – John doesn't look like he's cut out to be a criminal whatsoever, you know? It seems like he'd just be a regular nice guy even on the worst of days…so it wasn't too much of a surprise to see that he was struggling to figure out how to make ends meet by being on the wrong side of the law. Elaine, on the other hand, seems like she's practically in the midst of a psychotic breakdown by the very time that we meet her, and we don't really know what she's capable of. She might need a hug, or she might just f**kin' kill you, and it doesn't seem like we're going to be able to predict which way she'll go. If I'm being perfectly honest with ya, she looks like she's ready to audition for another remake of "The Crow." As John ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time and Elaine confronts him, our suspicions are pretty much confirmed – this dude ain't cut out for crime. "This isn't what I do!" he yells out while at the other end of a cold steel barrel. Elaine is so pilled-out on prescriptions that she has no clue what is or isn't real by the time she meets John face to face, and so the mystery continues to deepen. We don't know why John is in so far over his head, and we don't have any idea of what really makes Elaine the way that she is either – and so now we've got a classic odd couple scenario at work…kind of. As you might guess, John's night is only just beginning, and the harder he seems to try to make some kind of sense of it all, the further he gets buried by the madness surrounding him. Just like I had assumed, he's a nicer guy than you'd expect to meet in the circumstances he finds himself in, and even when the bullets start flyin' around, John is still likely to help you get to bed or hold your hair back while you puke. All strange, without a doubt. What I really enjoyed was that Hensley seemed to shoot this film in a way that enhanced the bizarreness of the script and captured this story on film in the most engaging way it could have likely been done. I like his use of effects, for the most part…speeding things up or distorting the imagery…it was all an appropriate fit when he decided to infuse the post-production technical stuff. What I probably enjoyed even more, though, was his natural style and the cleanest shots he added in – Mark's got a tremendous eye for how to shoot a scene and instinctively knows how to frame things in the right way to get the best out of his cast & the whole story they're involved in. As far as Daponte is concerned, I felt like he did a pretty solid job of leaving us just enough breadcrumbs to make a legitimate shot of trying to suss this whole thing out. I'm not gonna say he couldn't have made it easier or that it's all entirely coherent at all times…but I also don't think that was entirely his intention either. He chose to tell "Clown N Out" in a very fragmented type of way, and Hensley was up to the task of trying to follow his mischievous mind and let the viewers try to piece this all together.
"Jesus Christ, John, you're a morally outstanding home invader." This story between John and Elaine gets so twisted up from where it originally started that you actually have to wonder if you're about to witness some kind of accidental love story. I really thought Joe Heck, who plays this fairly clueless version of a criminal in John, did a solid job. Katy Mahard, who plays Elaine, arguably one-upped him as well. Most of this film rests squarely on their shoulders, and between them, they play this out like they never even felt the weight of that responsibility in the best of ways. As a result, you end up with this totally odd pairing of characters, largely stuck on the inside of one apartment, and it all somehow feels incredibly natural in what is unquestionably the strangest of circumstances. Or at least I'd assume that's the case… I've never been on Tinder myself, and I have heard some pretty wild stories about that place. Anyhow. You will meet a couple of other characters as well, but they seem very extraneous to this film, even though they do play fairly important parts in terms of the overall story that's being told here. The focus remains tightly on the two main characters, Elaine and John, and that's another indication of Hensley making the right decisions in terms of how to get the best out of this script on a cinematic level. While initially, you could certainly argue that neither of these characters are likeable or that they are capable of some kind of redemption, eventually, we come to really like them and want the best for 'em. Do I wish there was more of a tie-in to John's clowning history? Heck no! Don't get me wrong; I can definitely understand that the title of this film is gonna put some people off, to begin with - and throw off others who were tuning in for some clown-based mayhem. "Clown N Out" isn't going to be what you'd expect it to be, but in my opinion, that worked out to its advantage. I might not have had the opportunity to enjoy watching this film if it WAS entirely inspired by clown-related stuff…so for me, to discover there was a much deeper story here than at first expected…I dunno, call me crazy, but this worked out in the best way that it could have in terms of what I'd wanna watch. In the end, it's a quality Mystery that has a whole bunch of intersecting parts to it that combine the past with the present, and I feel like the more you pay attention to the details, the more you'll get out of it, even if you don't solve this on your own before it's over. Sometimes it's better to let things come atcha at the pace they're designed to, and that's where Hensley comes in to ensure the payload is delivered in the finale with its many twists and turns. I'm going with three and a half stars out of five here – "Clown N Out" was unexpectedly unique. |
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