Movie Review - Jackplot (Short Film)

As the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown Hollywood earlier this year, forcing most to stay-at-home and lock-down, Dekkoo decided to provide an avenue for certain creatives. Dekkoo is a streaming service, dedicated to gay men and others in the LGBTQ community. Back in May, it launched a competition called the Love & Distance Short Film Challenge. It invited 5-minute videos on queer relationships in quarantine or same-sex attractions dealing with the social distancing guidelines.

UK-based filmmaker Marco De Luca won the grand prize with his short film Two Meters Apart (2020). De Luca received $2500 cash and a deal to create a new video with a budget of $5000. This film is the result with De Luca directing and Hannah Hooton as writer. De Luca's film stars just two actors, just as the previous did that won him this opportunity. Instead of being about two men separated by the pandemic, unable to move forward in their relationship, reminiscing about moments in the daytime, this piece is about two men confined to the inside of a car, debating about their future, presumably driving home at night.

Jack Parr plays Kevin, the driver of the car. It's not sure if he's married or if he's engaged. Adam Redmore plays Jay, the man sitting next to Kevin in the passenger seat. Jay is either the husband or the fiancé to Kevin. In the backseat of their car is a duffel bag filled with cash. What looks like thousands and thousands of English currency. The entire narrative involves the two of them arguing about what to do with the cash or how they should spend it. However, immediately and increasingly, the two become distrustful of each other and even paranoid that something bad might happen.

What came to mind was Steven Knight's Locke (2014). Except, this isn't about a man juggling a confluence and conflict of his personal and professional lives. It's more about the insidious nature of greed. Even though there's no supernatural or metaphysical things occurring, it could be perceived as a more brief or minor episode of The Twilight Zone (1959). Plenty from that Rod Serling series involved people arguing over some kind of windfall that usually resulted in some kind of monkey's paw bargain. When De Luca inserts flashes of a tragic or horrific event, that Serling sensibility becomes all too clear. Otherwise, it could just be a visualization or version of that Alanis Morissette song, "Ironic."

Not Rated but contains language and bloody images.
Running Time: 11 mins.

Available on Dekkoo.