Him Her Roland
By John Oak Dalton • Feb 18th, 2004 • Category: ComedyA boorish goof with the heart of a cold-blooded killer, his equally efficient protege, and her considerably less effective protege (who suffers from a bad case of puppy love), are at the heart of a chaotic chain of events that begins with a smelly finger (don’t ask).
Him Her Roland is a visually striking, humorously acted short featuring a series of mob-style hits that begin to domino outrageously, leading to a surprising denouement.
Despite some uneven audio, the strong point of the short is the dynamic production values; a vibrant shooting style and a kinetic editing pace that is a notch above usual microcinema fare.
Unfortunately the weakest link is the script, not so much “Tarantino-esque” as a direct blood transfusion, with black-suited, mirror-shaded hitmen waxing philosophic between bouts of extreme carnage. It seems like after Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction we had a decade or so of these type of films, which was nine years and ten months too long, and I wish the writer/directors had pushed the envelope on the script the way they did on the dazzling visuals.
But Him Her Roland still holds some surprises, and is a nice introduction to the work of some talented filmmakers.
Two and a half stars.
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John Oak Dalton is a Community Television Station Manager by day, and a DIY acolyte by night. In the 80s he made Super-8 movies and his own basement mix tapes. In the 90s he hosted a cable-access show and made his own zines and minicomics. In the 21st Century he began working with grassroots video and microcinema and writing b-movies, and has more than a dozen projects on the shelf, on screen, in development, or in production.
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