2SSFA - 'The Fish and The Ring' by Ervinna Cahyadi

Premiering at the Vancouver Singapore Film Festival last year is The Fish and the Right, the debut film by Indonesian Ervinna Cahyadi, a Digital Animation graduate from NTU. With the swath of 3D animated films ruling the big screens recently, this 2D feature is a welcome breath of fresh air that is both traditional and effective in conveying the unpretentious story.

An old man sits by the jetty reminiscing when a fish devours his ring, believing it is supper. Concurrently an old lady, marooned in a shipwreck, is reflecting about her life. The marine creature thus acts as the matchmaker between the two forlorn long-lost lovebirds, who obviously believed they’d never see each other again.

Fate plays funny games on people, and this is espoused in this silent piece that definitely has the capability to go places.

This film was nominated for Best Animation at the recent 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards.

2SSFA - 'Flux' by Nigel Heng

An international finalist in the Jumping Frames Film Festival held in Hong Kong last year. Flux is an experimental short film that questions the role of a housewife, content with simply taking care of household chores everyday and perhaps nothing much else. She dances through her daily routine, finding excitement in run-of-the-mill roles like cooking, and cleaning. Or does she?

The irony of losing oneself in the process is emphasized in Nigel Heng’s work, a collaboration with local dance choreographer Elysa Wendi of the Arts Fission Company. The protagonist seems happy. She starts dancing in her home, unknowingly under the watchful gaze of the intrusive voyeuristic audience. Her dance steps are sleek, bordering on the visceral yet harbouring a geisha-esque feel of restriction. And she sheds her hair and skin along the way, a symbolism of losing one’s outer personality until there is barely an empty core left.
This film was nominated at the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards for Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Experimental film.

2SSFA - 'Wake' by Atsuko Hirayanagi

Wake delves into the afterlife, a provoking story of desolate loneliness and misery. How would you feel if you were bereft of any loved ones by your side when you breathe your last breath? That, the takeaway from a tale that revolves around a 15-year-old corpse and an unfulfilled wish.

The protagonist, Mike, is a demolition site inspector that paradoxically hoards onto his past despite destroying for the future. His ineptitude to let go of his past and his unwillingness to move on with the future, and the subsequent regret, denial and self-pity that inevitably takes over form the core of the short film. The mature offering (pun unintended) more than deserves its slew of nominations, and its Best Art Direction win.

The morose tale was part of Atsuko’s repertoire at the prestigious New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Asia—and inspired from a 2004 Japanese news article about a 20-year-old skeleton found in an abandoned apartment on the verge of demolition. Why had nobody bothered to look him up?

Or perhaps life is really as heartless as it goes, ebbing and flowing. And the past, easily forgotten no matter how hard one struggles to hold on.

This film was nominated at the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards for Best Director, Best Fiction, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Performance and won for Best Art Direction.

2SSFA - 'Mickey' by Wesley Leon Aroozoo

Wesley Leon Aroozoo’s artistic direction and film conceptualization harbor a certain je ne sais quoi. On one hand it is really tempting to simply dismiss his filmography as bizarre; yet on the other there is certainly more than meets the eye than sheer absurdity.

The opening scene is impressionistic of Moon (2009), a British science fiction drama directed by Duncan Jones. The film, cleverly titled in a double entendre that pays homage to a popular Disney mouse, makes obvious mickey out of the human obsession with scientific experimentation and its will toward progress. In a running commentary that sometimes lapses into Hindi, multifold otherwise innocuous comparisons between rats and human beings are made that is destined to confuse more than clear the air.

“I see everything yet nothing,” Aroozoo cleverly mocks the baffled audience in one of the lines in his film. And with that, he hits home strongly the fallacy that scientists, and gradually human beings, tend to think they see the big picture despite being myopic most of the times. Like three blind mice.

This film was nominated for Best Art Direction (Wesley Leon Aroozoo, Michelle Cheong) and Best Experimental at the 2ns Singapore Short Film Awards.

2SSFA - 'Scot Free' by Chia Peizhen

Scot Free has travelled widely, screening to Film Festival audiences in Singapore, Vancouver and Bangkok. This 16-minute French short garnered a triple nomination at the Singapore Short Film Awards, an easily well-deserved feat given its tight-pacing and novel means of telling a relatively clichéd story. The director’s bio explains all—Chia, who recently graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, majored in directing and has a penchant of featuring female empowerment in her films.


Two female French tourists find themselves utterly bored in the stoic urban jungle that is Singapore. Well, what would they expect—romanticism à la Paris all over the world? They complain endlessly about the heat and humidity, whine about the lack of cultural elements and the need to report to their relatives back home with lies of what they have been up to, and cringe their noses at Indian food.

Yet one night an uninvited guest suddenly appears at their hotel room door—a drunkard who stereotypically has to be a German to add to the European mix. Violence ensues, and they somehow murder him. But what matters more, however, is the secondary plot that lies beneath this façade, a subdued lesbian story that is told through exchanged words, gazes, and actions.

“Simple things can be hard to explain at times,” muses one of the protagonists. How true.

This film was nominated for Best Director, Best Fiction and Best Script at the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards.

2SSFA - 'Too Far North' by Koo Chia Meng

“For the people and the places that took us away and brought home with us.”

So reads the one-liner synopsis for Koo Chia Meng’s Too Far North, a 5-minute non-fiction film that intersperses Singaporean voiceovers with still shots of the Taipei city landscape, and the occasional time-lapse. The cinematography is exquisite, as Koo exhibits a sensitivity to framing in his maximization of the use of lines in several stunning frames, one of which an aerial shot of a busy Taipei crossroad that was especially impressionistic to this reviewer.

The film’s message is clear and strong without any of the overbearing Total Defence “love your country” overtones that our government bodies seem to be fond of in their collaterals and avdertisements. All in all, this short film was certainly effective in evoking the silver of pride the average cynical Singaporean layperson might have buried deep in the recesses of his heart.

“Only you would know where home is”. Well said.

This film was nomniated for Best Documentary in the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards.

2SSFA - 'The Forest Spirits' by Ting Szu Kiong

I attended the first nominee sscreening of the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards expecting films that were of top-notch quality, to say the least. Thus I was actually befuddled over the inclusion of The Forest Spirits, until I found out what the film was nominated for later on.

To say the least, this was definitely the weakest showing of the six films screened for the programme. For it is downright slapstick and tacky. Granted that B-grade films is a respectable genre all on their own—and I would say the best B-grade film would be one that is the most slapstick, the most tacky, the most lame—but this film simply jars from the lineup of what are otherwise pretty outstanding shorts.

Of course there is a need for a crowdpleaser, but this hardly sat in with the Substation crowd.

The Forest Spirits is lame, unfunny, and tries too hard to entertain yet end up leaving audiences confounded over how they spent their last eight minutes of their lives. “What on earth was that?” I thought to myself. Maybe the forest spirits could help me answer that.

Yet my review notes did include one line that was the perfect answer to my initial doubts over the inclusion of this screening: “(The) music is really polished.” Unfortunately, it falls short of winning an award—in fact all the short films nominated for the category fell short—because the judges were looking for sound design that is “more than just putting music into a film” and that “involves a sound scape”. It does make sense—for all the polished technicalities of the music, it only serves to accentuate the scenes onscreen without serving to create a visceral image in the minds of the audience.

This films was nminated for Best Sound (Studio.MB) at the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards.

2SSFA - 'Timeless' by K Rajagopal

Moments of human connections are seamlessly melded together, blurring the lines between history and the present reality. History as we know it, is commonly enshrouded in a aura of grandeur and mysticism. Yet, it is written by humans and driven by humanly motivations just you and I are capable of. 'Timeless' by K Rajagopal humanises and normalises history and even suggests a few deviations.

Told through 4 different time periods, it is really a film about the frailty of human connections. Antagonism turns sexual urge. A sense of solace turns into passion which then evaporates in a flash of an awakening. In each of the episodes, Siva (which is also the actor's name) appears interacting with the characters in different states of existence but in the same temperament. But in each of the situations, fear consumes him and he walks away. In the 1875 episode where the murder of J Birch took place, sensing trouble on his master's, Siva chooses to walk away from duty. In the 1969 racial rioting episode, Siva watches helplessly as an aggressor threatens to the take the life of a young girl. In a more recent episode, Siva is both a saviour and deserter. Or perhaps, it's just about being alienated from everything else.

Rajagopal's works typically stem from an emotional state rather than a concept or a story. Sensitive in his grasp of the the interactions and fluid in his protrayal, his works often present a interesting duality about the human condition - that we can be so primeval and yet complex. You can tell that Raja's approach is highly intuitive. Yet, in the randomness and formlessness, it imparts a wisdom about behaviour. I would even draw an analogy that they amount some kind of soft porn with added weight of considering the characters' mental states. It is very tactile yet the emotions run deep.

Finally, another crucial part of the 'Timeless' equation is the visual texture and effective use of the water motif. There is a discernible affinity to nature in the film with the use of the forest as a background, the organic feel to the 'colouring' and of course, human nudity. (The nudity here is an even bigger visual statement with the deliberate 'colour-contrasting' of darker Indian skin tones again white zen like furniture and bed.) While aesthetic in its use, they seem to allude to the evergreen nature of human behaviour and how we are gripped by the same fears and insecurities regardless of time or era.

2SSFA - 'Bani Ibrahim' (Best Fiction) by Raihan Harun

When asked about the process of deciding which film would win Best Fiction, the jury at the Singapore Short Film Awards related to the audience that the winner was clear. Given the Straits Times very biased pre-awards coverage which spotlighted Rajagopal as being a cut above the rest, opinions were largely swayed in that direction. While Raja's work was nonetheless exciting, giving the award to a new face was invigorating. Raihan Harun won with a short film that was powerful and yet able to fill its huge thematic shoes on terrorism and suicide bombing.

'Bani Ibrahim' which translates to Children of Abraham, brings the audience 15 minutes of intense moral dilemma, heartache and several gunshots. The epic proportions of the topic makes it a challenge to scale it but Raihan has given us microcosmic view of it through a family torn apart by differing ideals. At one end, there is an Australian Muslim doctor who has adopted the ways of the locals here and helms a family happily settled here. On the other polar end is his radical-minded brother who makes an entrance in the film with a row of bombs strapped to his chest. You get the picture.

The issues make it easy for the film to be dramatic and engaging but it is Raihan's humanising touches that lends depth to the film. Behind every violent 'freedom fighter', is a family grounded in the simple things like playing a board game together. The films opens casting a scrutinising gaze at the impressionable sons of the protagonist father. They are playing an innocent game yet there are undertones of uncertainty and an strange ominous air hangs over the game. The suicide bomber shocker then punches in at the right moment, unleashing the crux of the film. Raihan cleverly avoids too much focus on the weaponry but rather more on the clash of ideals and the moral dilemma. This is also where you realise the necessity of the quieter buildup at the beginning where you see the father in his fatherly role - making the change of heart and allegiance more heart-breaking.

Raihan has also skillfully stretched the narrative hook by making us believe that the father was really going to heed his brotherly calling. On one hand, it makes you wonder when the film was going to end as it has just opened a new can of worms. But the narrative finds its twist quite naturally to be able to bring this chapter to a close - a close that has a decided stand on the issue. Not that it was bad to have a closed ending but given the complexity of the issue, it might have left the audience with something more to think about if we had a flawed protagonist who is left at a point of indecision when the credits roll.

2SSFA - 'Mrs Santha Bhaskar' by Tara Tan

Tara's first (?) foray into film is 3 minutes of gold, shimmers and accented delivery. She displays a well-trained eye for composition and aesthetics, reflecting that in the cinematography. In fact, every frame looks picture perfect in this simple documentary about 70-yr old Indian classical dancer Mrs Santha Bhaskar who came to Singapore in 1955 and pioneered the local Indian classical dance scene. The film packs a moderate surprise in the way it testifies the following Indian classical dance has gained among the Indian locals here, especially since it appears to be an exquisite and highly challenging dance form. In a strange way, the documentary felt a tad dated because of the purity and 'old-school' fashion of the treatment. But the film could perhaps be, for Tara, being a dance critic, a vehicle to explore her bigger love.

2SSFA - 'CMYK' by Khoo Yi Hui

'CMYK' is a clever and endearing take on a component of everyday life that we take for granted - the printer. Four character enter a world of pencil sketchings, they are (and no prizes for guessing) Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (for Black). They are actually paintbrushes each in one of the 4 colours. They come across what looks like a basin which actually acts as a trampoline in which they bounce on it and spread their colour in the uplift. The novelty of the idea is complemented by the fluidity of the animation. In fact, its polished craft makes it possible for it to be mistaken as a UIC paint commercial! I also like how it is gawkily sweet at the end when Mr Blackbrush tries to contribute but makes a mess of the whole picture, which the other '3 friends' don't seem to mind in the end.

2SSFA - 'The Beat of the City that Freezed' by Joo Choon Lin

The amount of dedication that goes into any stop-motion animation piece is a surefire testament to the passion to the art. This eight-minute piece is clearly a budding sign to Singapore’s fledgling future in the animation scene, one that is unwise to remain insouciant to. With local input in films like Rango (2011), there is definitely room for upcoming filmmakers like Joo Choon Lin, whose verve shines in The Beat of the City that Freezed (2010). The tour de force, a stop-motion silent, harbors an effortless integration of sound effects making it a worthy nominee in both the Best Animation and Best Sound categories.

At first glance, the short is seemingly sheer jabberwocky. Yet it is anything but, the short film an experimental environmental piece that jars. The pulchritude of Choon Lin’s takes lies in cognitive dissonance with the cesspool as inflicted in the film. The preamble harks back to Darwinian theory, a pursuit of the single oddball misfit—the red ball, a persona non grata forced into eventual evolution, a metamorphorsis that clearly espouses the “survival of the fittest”. It then becomes the heart of a bigger creature in a stark empty room that soon is filled with debris. A wall disintegrates, and external elements diffuse within, the outside world portrayed through “live” traffic footage as a metaphor to technological advancement and its inevitable pollution. The conveyor belt of waste, a clever innuendo of the cyclical nature of garbage, and how it is neverending unless someone puts a stop to it. The world freezes over, a second Ice Age burgeons, and the environmental message possibly timely given the scrutiny of environmental messages and with contrived events like Earth Hour around the corner. Sorry for the cynicism, but I don’t see how such forced campaigns will do anything to alter long-term mindsets.

To take things a step further in what continues to flummox me, Choon Lin misspells the past tense of ‘freeze’ as ‘freezed’ as opposed to ‘froze’. The reason, perhaps, is an open mystery.

This film was nominated for Best Animation and Best Sound and the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards

2SSFA - 'Epiphany' Han Xuemei

The premise of this short film—a final-year project for NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information—seems a tad overdone. From the breakout award-winning Crash (2004) to Babel (2006), the butterfly effect has been a recurring theme in films attempting to capture a tangible link to what starts out as seemingly disparate events—and possibly discombobulate audiences.

Yes, we get it. What goes around comes around, karma is a bitch. And the synopsis, all of one sentence, easily augurs a sense of foreboding. Quoted verbatim, it reads as such: “On a particular morning, three vulnerable individuals unknowingly cross paths and play a part in changing one another’s destinies”.

That said, Epiphany provides a hackneyed Asian angle to this theme. We have the forlorn suicidal daughter, all decked in bright red and threatening to haunt as a vengeful spirit; her grandmother, fraught with worry at the sudden disappearance of the daughter leading to near tragedies; the hooligan boyfriend, the distracted speeding driver, et al. The short purveys these stereotypes, along with the notion of an interconnectability of fate that would perhaps lead some to ponder over the very existence of life, watch out for signs of fate, and question the law of averages.

While characterization is strong, the short 23 minutes was unfortunately insufficient to make me commiserate with the characters. After all, everything that happens is seemingly out of their hands. Life is unfair, they get the short end of the stick. Er, too bad for them? It’s not as if there was any clear attempt to get out of their rut.

Yet the mature editing warrants a nomination—strong pacing ensures that the audience is kept at bay throughout the numerous twists and turns—right up to the final scene of the suicidal daughter’s creepy smile at the camera. The gaze, a pivotal cinematic component, is well-executed. We see the stark fear, despair, anxiety, realization, and a myriad of emotions through the window of the soul. And they beguilingly connect, both with the other onscreen characters and with the audience.

This film was nominated for Best Editing at the 2nd Singapore Short Film Awards.

2SSFA - 'Lost Soles' by Ng Wee Kiat

Shoes are sensitive matters. Above their obvious function, they give us dignity. Many films have demonstrated how close shoes are to the human heart, like Jack Neo’s Home Run and The Devil Wears Prada (‘soleful’ in all senses of the word). Similarly, ‘Lost Soles’ by Ng Wee Kiat (surprisingly a Chinese director directing a Malay language film), deals a mother child relationship and how a pair of shoes bring them closer together.

This film does not escape the trap of stereotypes – the long-suffering mother who gives her child everything and leaves nothing for herself; the young naïve boy who is still learning the ropes of life. The only ‘un-stereotypical’ quality is that the boy appears rather well-fed despite his family’s financial difficulty that prevents his mother from buying him a new pair of shoes. Leaning on a simple, unpretentious storyline, this film is about keeping your eyes open and noticing the little (or big) things the people around you are doing for you. While linear most of the time, a few narrative twists and suspensions add bite to hidden moral messages. But ultimately, it is its plain-speaking style and the way the actors slip so easily into their roles (sorry for shoe pun) that make it a quiet winner.

2SSFA - 'V1K1' by Tzang Mervyn Tong

What is a ‘techno fairytale’? Just a fairytale with sci-fi touch or a does it aim to be something that relates to the future world that we are going to inherit? I’d like to think it’s both – that’s it is an visual exploration as well as a something that echoes modern sensibilities and carries a pertinent message. Can ‘Avatar’ be considered a techno-fairytale? Possibly, even though some of the visual influences seem prehistoric. VIK1 can certainly be what it claims to be – a techno fairytale. It ‘s got the full motley bunch of alien-like characters, dramatic sound effects, bursts of stardusts around the characters and man vs ‘natural order’ moralistic slant to the story to make it complete.

Director Tzang Mervyn Tong breaks another new ground with sci-fi in this one. The film reflects his closeness to the genre, a knack for special effects (given the limited budgets), a seasoned director’s eye and even some occasional punches of humour. However, from the rather purist opening to this review, you might smell a whiff of skepticism to towards the film somewhere. While the film is very conscientiously put-together, what was presented would have worked better as a book. After the initial visual pyrotechnics (literally), the film slips into long bouts of preachy dialogue that dilutes the very confident visual build-up right from the delightfully suspenseful opening credits. The actors in this film certainly had a heavy burden to bear, trying to sustain the prolonged conversation about mankind and the ecosystem. Just as trying were some of the costumes! Given the demands of the content and the relative inexperience of the actors, director Mervyn could have done himself a favour with some cutaways and even relied on the power of the unspoken and hence, our interpolation. Too much had been explained.

It is a formidable task applying the sci-fi genre to the Singapore context without looking too much like SBC’s Channel 8’s sci-fi attempts in the 1980s. The Singapore landscape just does not provide an ambience that inspires and Tzang has actually done a tremendous job with preventing it from falling into a huge B-Grade trap, all things considered. Having said that, watch out for the ‘kitchen sieve-like’ round antennas of the master alien! Not that affects the overall viewing.

2SSFA - 'Dinner' by Kaz Cai

'Dinner' by Kaz Cai is a supernatural romance by a filmmaker who has produced, directed and/or edited documentaries and live concerts over the past decade, and whom also has a number of television commercial Apollo Awards to her name. With multifarious accolades, it comes as no surprise that this short packed the most punch. It’s the best written, it grips you right from the start and doesn’t let you go till the end. It has interesting characters—you’ll never go wrong with ex-convicts-turn-good who wishes to forge friendships with just about any old lady you meet in the middle of the night along a creepy street. The best ambience, it’s vintage lighting as a renaissance of the 1924 era, and the cricket sounds accentuating the spooky deserted streets in the middle of the night. With minimal dialogue, this is easily the best showcase of the adage “Show, don’t tell”, especially when you can easily infer what is going on onscreen. Kaz shows impeccable eye for detail, her mise-en-scène stunning. The still chair against a passing bicycle, the smiling old lady sitting on a bench centralized within the frame, which tracks out to show her sitting directly beneath the lighted cross of a church. Which in itself is really creepy, the fact that everything occurs on Chinese Valentine’s Day, which falls on the seventh day of the Hungry Ghost Month, in itself a clear harbinger that things may be anything but normal—to the audience, but sadly not to our protagonist.

2SSFA - 'Yours Truly' by Kevin Chan

The hopeless romantic in me really enjoyed (and even teared at) 'Yours Truly' by Kevin Chan. Yes, the plot has obvious Korean drama inspirations—just look at the promotional film still—but what Kevin has done was remarkable. He condensed what would otherwise be a 2-hour melodrama into a 12-minute short, whilst managing to take the audience on a whirlwind emotional roller-coaster of Rachel and Chris’ relationship. We earnestly want the picture-perfect couple together in a happily-ever-after ending. But alas, the twist can be seen coming from miles away and the audience knows disaster is bound to strike. Too many bombs are littered throughout the film—the cornea transplant, photography, the need for a deceased to be the cornea bearer—such that the bombshell at the end is, in all its literal scene of the word, is just a shell without the explosives. Yet it works, because that’s how Korean melodramas are typically like. Which makes me also think that the film would perhaps be more palatable if it was shot in Korean. Though perhaps casting might have been tough given how it was Kevin’s graduation thesis in his Master in Film & Television at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne. But Kevin demonstrates acuity in his direction, with strong angles, beautiful cinematic photography and a lingering storyline that’s impactful and touching despite the foreseeable twist.

2SSFA - 'The Highest Stakes' by Gavin Ramoutar

A casually dressed father resting on the living room sofa on an ordinary day, suggesting unemployment, a responsible housewife who manages the family's purse and typical young daughter who seeks attention from her distracted father. A phone call comes, he looks troubled yet surreptitious and you get the whole picture. Mouths need to be fed and the father owes money. But even the most done-to-death loanshark story can be given a new lease of life.

This is where director Gavin Ramoutar understands the magic of character quirks as a visual motif and a narrative tool. In this case, the daughter has the quirk - she likes playing underneath the table, like it was her tent, her little abode. This quirk is the film's pivot. It helps register the beginning and signals the ending. The man who has to go out was forced by his wife to take his daughter. Shots of the Sunday stampede at Little India provide a clue to the later development that daughter would get lost, at which point, a halo of an epiphany hovers above enlightening you on why the film is titled so. In fact, what's delightful about this film is that visual metaphors are effortless. The bustle of a crowd of foreigners seeking fortunes in Singapore, the familiar 'wheel of fortune' near Rowell Road, the menacing traffic, all add to story's visual fabric, without trying too hard. And amidst the chaos that's Little India, here is the director who is not lost to the drama and madness but sure-footedly completes his narrative loop.

2SSFA - 'Acronym City' by Leon Cheo

Acronym City would have been interesting as a music video, going by the way director Leon Cheo had created a palpable rhythm out of the recitations of the acrynoms by the various talking heads. Leon interviewed a credible selection of experts in literature (like Dr Kirpal Singh) and linguistics and plebian Singaporeans on why they think we have evolved to be a nation that loves acronyms.

The film succeeds in the eliciting the ludicrous nature of this national obsession through piecing together the acronym montage and ‘acronymising’ the interviewees’ occupations in a ‘self-mocking way’. The result is a film that begs for instantaneous audience reaction and laughs.

However, and strangely, the film did not explain one acronym that it strategically included in the synopsis – KNNBCCB. Being part of every Singaporean man’s inception into manhood in the army, its absence was felt in the film. Ultimately, it’s not just about this 7-word expletive but about exploring the vernacular acronyms and social taboo as well, which the explanations of the interviewees did not capture. This is where the ownership of acronyms is actually universal and not restricted to an educated crowd that belongs to the fast-efficient Singapore that they all talked about in this documentary.

2SSFA - 'Hiding Under Covers' by Michael Davies

Tension hangs as a bloody-faced mafia boss cruelly lectures his victims before they face the final blow. The film cleverly hinges on that bloodied face as a visual hook to lure the audience into the dark minds of the 2 protagonists. It goes back in time with a flashback on how the 2 men ended up at the mafia’s mercy. All three men, the protagonists and the boss were in a room when news surfaced that police were on their way to raid their hideout. The two men then began a mutual ‘outing’ of each other, which seemed somewhat clumsily delivered by the actors.

Thankfully, the crisp editing and storytelling brought the pace up and the boss was accidentally shot. Hence, the bloodied face, which also inevitably makes the audience predict that he is not actually dead for the first scene to have happened. But for that moment, the 2 men (who later confessed they were the police) panicked over how the body was to hidden. While keeping up the tension the director kept some room for a Freudian, humourous dig at the Indian sensibility of chopping up the dead body and cooking it in curry!

The actor who played the boss was a solid anchor who gave gravitas to the otherwise sparse set. There were only 2 bodyguards but it felt like there were more, somehow ambushed in the darkness. The masterful play on lighting and framing also helped accentuate the best of what little the film was resting on.

The film completes a loop by going back to the starting point where the hooded victims were about to be shot but yet delightfully, thwarts our assumed understanding in a completely different direction. Makes you realize that there is such a thing a gangsta-flick sensibility, those who have it know what the audience already expects and surprises us at the right moments. Those who don’t, basically drag us through he film spending half the time explaining it.