• Written and directed by Brad Osborne
• Starring
  • Eric Johnson
  • Julie Arebalo
  • Dameon Clarke
  • Patrick Jordan
  • Halim Jabbour
• Produced by Marc Pilvinsky

If you’ve been paying attention in class here, you know that I’ve been getting the short end on screeners. I’ve seen some real stinkers lately, and some that didn’t stink so much as have no scent at all. [Note to self: replace that godawful metaphor before I post this review.]

And you also know, if you were around last week, that nothing gives me misgivings so strongly as a letter accompanying a screener that attempts to apologize for the movie before I’ve even seen it. Which is what came with my copy of Hall of Mirrors; director/writer/composer Brad Osborne took the bulk of his letter to be sure I knew that this was really really low-budget, that the digital video footage wasn’t going to compare to big-budget 35mm, that there was a lot of white noise on the soundtrack…

Ah, gambling — a pastime for the happy-go-lucky, frolicsome type.

Message to Brad:

You only need to apologize if the movie’s bad, dude. This one’s pretty damned good. So stop apologizing already.

Our beleaguered protagonist is one Dylan Hewitt (Eric Johnson), a young professional financial consultant — an ironic career, as he’s also a gambling addict. Our introduction to him is in a casino, where he demonstrates the poor judgement of desperate optimism; he’s already down $23,000 in a blackjack game, but his luck’s gotta change, right? Right?

Hah.

And this isn’t his only debt; he’s already in thirty-eight grand to his bookie Milo, a debt which is due in 24 hours. He can’t get a loan, his bills are past due, and his ex tells him not to call anymore. You know that feeling just below your rib cage when your 747 hits an unexpected dip? Cue that. Even his coworker friend Alex (Patrick Jordan), who loves him like a brother, can’t help; he’s recently divorced, and anyway, who really has $90,000 sitting around to bail out friends?

Dylan takes his troubles to a bar, where in a drunken rage he defends a beautiful woman from an abusive date. (In a credit to honesty in filmmaking, Dylan wins the fight more due to surprise and the fact that other patrons dragged them apart rather than that “my strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure” jazz.) Her name is Mara (Julie Arebalo), and her date was her ride, so Dylan gives her a lift back to her place, and she invites him in for a drink, and dot dot dot.

“Either you’re very drunk, or I’m incredibly beautiful.”

He leaves in late evening or early, and is back in his own bed in time for a mysterious 5 AM phone call. His anonymous caller knows all about his financial situation, including his denied loans and the rebuff from his ex, and offers him, well, a deal he can’t refuse.

Trapped by circumstance, Dylan meets his mysterious caller in a diner at noon; Mr. Mystery introduces himself as “Haze” (Halim Jabbour), an erudite sort with diabolical eyes and a diabolical hairline. He plunks down a $100, a $50, a $20, a $10, a $5, and a $1. These, he says, are the best counterfeits ever produced. And $100,000 of it can be yours for only $10,000 of real government issue.

Dylan finds his ethical qualms quickly silenced by his dire circumstances, and agrees to the deal. At work, he surreptitiously “borrows” $10,000 from a client account, needing to pay it back without 48 hours before it’s discovered. He meets Haze at the appointed time, and meets his working associate.

It’s Mara.

While he’s still trying to figure out if it’s a coincidence or a setup, they blindfold him and take him to their printing facility, where they trade real money for fake. They then deposit him where they found him, breathing a sigh of relief.

” ‘Joking’? Does my hairline LOOK like I’m joking?”

He gets home, opens the satchel — and there’s nothing in it but sawdust.

Remember that lurching feeling in the pit of the stomach? Yeah. That. And we’re approximately 39 minutes into the movie.

He tries her apartment, but it’s vacant, and apparently has been for months. The only clue he has to go on is a keychain he saw in her hand — with “Hall of Mirrors” emblazoned on the logo.

To tell you more of the plot would be to rob you of the joys of discovery. I will tell you, however, that this is only a sampling of the twists, double-crosses, and double-takes to come. Eventually, things involve murder, the Secret Service, and that pesky bookie who wants his money. And betrayal. Betrayal by the truckload.

“All right — a free vacation in Club Fed for the next bozo who tells me I look like David Arquette!”

To say that the plot is convoluted is like saying that McDonald’s has sold quite a few hamburgers. And with that comes the attendant problem: When it’s all said and done, I find it hard to figure out why in the world the conspiratorial types constructed such an intricate and confusing scheme, especially one that relies so heavily on Dylan picking up on clues and following inferences. By the end, it becomes such an unwieldy deception that I started to wonder if they were going to pull a Usual Suspects on me. Such is the danger of overly elaborate plotting, I suppose — but flawed though it is, it still kept me glued, simply because I was damned if I was going to let anything slip by me.

Other little things snagged at my brain — why would the Secret Service guy have Dylan wear a wire when they’ve set up the meeting to be in their controlled hotel room? (So we can have its inevitable discovery, of course) And why does Dylan keep going back to the least safe location in the known universe, his own apartment? — but anything done wrong was consistently overshadowed by what was done right. Casting was impeccable, and everyone performed with professional style. Dylan’s predicament is not merely sketched in for motivation; it’s dramatized for maximum gut-wrenching “you are there” effect. And the injuries that the bookie’s thug inflicts on Dylan had me yelping in sympathy.

If there’s one big flaw in the whole production, it’s that it’s simply too long. Not that an hour and forty-five minutes is a gargantuan movie, but in this case it does let the pace drag some. For instance, we’re a full twenty minutes into the movie by the time that Dylan gets his mysterious phone call, and while that twenty minutes effectively sets up the true desperation of his predicament, it also keeps us from getting into the meat of the plot for too long. Chopping an additional ten or fifteen minutes out of the total running time, in increments of a few seconds here and there, would have not only sped up the movie, but given an even more frenetic edge to the perpetual paradigm-busting that Dylan is going through each time he thinks he has it figured out.

Ow! Ow! Ow ow owowowow! Ow!

Despite the fact that I have, as per my habit, spent a good deal of type here bitching, the fact remains that this is an impressive, suspenseful and (best of all) intelligent movie. And here’s the kicker:

It was made for less than $4000.

Now, I knew going in that it was shot on digital video, and it’s a notch or two more obviously video-y than, say, HorrorVision, but it’s still a very professional looking production, roughly analogous to what you’d see on a British production like Mobil Masterpiece Theater. (Not that I, you know, actually watch that kind of stuff — I just see promos while I’m waiting for more masculine PBS fair, like The Red Green Show or Robot Wars.) I had thought that the letter that I got with the tape had been trying to give itself street cred by calling it a “micro budget” movie; it wasn’t until I reviewed the official website and saw the budget. I’m no technical professional, but my guess had been that Hall of Mirrors was made for something less than $50,000, a figure which turned out to be off by a factor of ten. Compare that with The Third Society from last week, also an indy production, with a price tag of $500,000 — more than a hundred times more costly, and roughly a hundred times less worth watching.

Folks, Hall of Mirrors deserves to be in your neighborhood Blockbuster. But in case it doesn’t make it there, you may just want to shell out the bucks and pick up a copy.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0