Overtime Blu-ray Review
Pulp Friction.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 1, 2013
Well, folks, it's officially 2013, which means we've all outlived the much ballyhooed Mayan Apocalypse by more than a
week now. Some of us may have even weathered the end of the western calendar (or at least its 2012 version)
without a serious hangover. But if news reports of the on again, off again Fiscal Cliff aren't enough to ignite your worst
fears about the future (or lack thereof) of humanity, consider this: VCI Entertainment, the unassuming niche label
located in the southern part of America's heartland in Oklahoma, a label which has previously specialized in family fare
and Dove Award winning releases, is bringing out
Overtime, a sporadically entertaining zombie movie
featuring two well meaning if dunderheaded hitmen who drop the F-bomb with rather unabated alacrity. Mix in some
pretty gruesome special effects and a more than passing Tarantino vibe to the entire enterprise, and this is certainly
one of the most peculiar pairings of product to established brand that I personally can recall. Two or three states to
the east of Oklahoma is Kentucky, home to most of the principal cast and crew of
Overtime, pet project of co-
writers, co-producers and co-directors Brian Cunningham and Matt Niehoff. (The two also contributed to a host of other
functions on the film, including everything from special effects to editing to cinematography to, one assumes, craft
services.) The only putative "name" in the cast is Al Snow, whom some will remember as a so-called "WWE Superstar".
The rest of the cast (including the wonderfully named Avri Apocalypse, just in case you thought this review's end of the
world framing device didn't make any sense) are evidently longtime friends and/or acquaintances of Cunningham and
Niehoff, so some cynics might accuse
Overtime of being little more than a vanity project, or at best an amped up
learning experience for two young filmmakers. But against considerable odds, there's actually quite a bit to like about
Overtime, at least if you're not expecting it to be a Dove Award winning holier than thou typical VCI
Entertainment release.
Overtime opens with a
faux news report featuring an unctuous reporter trying to interview an evident
murderer who has just been gotten off by his attractive female attorney. We then segue to two
Pulp Fiction-
esque characters, Raf (Al Snow) and Max (John Wells), who show up at the murderer's home pretending to be FBI
agents.
Things don't exactly go swimmingly, but Raf and Max end up killing the murderer and all of his pectorally enhanced
henchmen. Raf ends up taking a bullet in the arm in the process. The film then abruptly changes direction yet again
when
Raf and Max drop by Raf's home, where his wife Tammy (Cristina Mullins) is cooking breakfast and Raf's son is
ensconced
in playing videogames. Tammy takes Raf to task for bleeding on an otherwise pristine white dress shirt, and just for
good
measure reminds Raf that today is their son's birthday and that Raf was supposed to have made all the arrangements,
including hiring a clown, buying a present and picking up a cake.
As if things weren't tonally diverse enough, we soon find out that Max and Raf are actually hired hitmen who work for
the
attorney we saw in the opening "news report". It turns out she gets these despicable lowlifes off, collects
her huge fees, and then has Max and Raf dispatch them to prevent any future crimes from being committed. However,
she's just found out that the murderer Max and Raf just killed had an accomplice, a guy named Greg Chambers (James
Tackett) who was evidently helping the dead guy cut drugs with some very dangerous new chemical. She tells Max and
Raf that they need to track down Chambers and get rid of him stat.
That finally sets the film off on its central
act of action, where yet another couple of twists and turns show up.
Before we can get to that central section, however, Raf attempts to buy his son the latest gaming console, the so-called
Y-Box 720. Niehoff and Cunningham go completely gonzo in this brief segment, starting it out with a supposed
advertisement for the product that features a number of lunatic satirical elements, an advertisement that is then
revealed to be one of those eternal loops that plays in big box stores in the Home Electronics Department. It's
probably one too many detours in a film already fraught with tangents (Niehoff and Cunningham only up this particular
ante by including a
longer Y-Box riff after the closing credits). In perhaps one indication of the lo-fi charms of
this film, listen to how Snow calls the gum chewing girlfriend of the store clerk "Steph", when he really shouldn't know
her name, and when that
is the name of another female character he's about to meet in the film.
As if all of
that didn't bob and weave enough, we now get to the actual main thrust of
Overtime, when
Raf and Max track down Chambers only to find out he's been experimenting with alien bodily fluids and has unwittingly
helped to create a horde of zombies which have overtaken the weird silo like facility where he's holed up with a number
of other survivors. The film then becomes a more or less standard "shoot the head and you kill the beast" battle
extravaganza, albeit with Raf and Max
also trying to keep a cake they find in the lab in decent condition along
the way.
As should probably be clear by this long and winding road, which frankly doesn't even cover
all of the madness
of
Overtime (have I neglected to mention the alcoholic homeless guy crashed in the back of Raf's Mustang whom
he's going to try to pass off as a clown at his kid's birthday party?),
Overtime isn't exactly a model of decorum or
restraint. But it's actually surprisingly engaging, most of which comes from Snow and Wells' deadpan delivery as more
and more mayhem erupts around them. The two have an enjoyable camaraderie, and while Snow is the ostensible
"star", my money is on Wells actually being able to matriculate to Hollywood for some "real" film work. He's charismatic,
obviously has the physicality of an action star, and also has a nice self-deprecating quality which could translate well
into higher budgeted fare.
Cunningham and Niehoff are also deserving of kudos for elevating the film at least slightly above the typical first timer
indie efforts. Things are well staged, intelligently framed and decently edited. Some of the music is annoyingly
overdone, but otherwise this is an unexpectedly solid offering in a zombie apocalypse genre that, like cockroaches,
seems fated to endure forever. The film has a
lot of potentially objectionable language, as well as quite a bit of
human
and alien gore, so forewarned is forearmed.