That Side of a Shadow (Ricky Fosheim, 2010): USA

Reviewed by Rhys Davis. Viewed at the Metro 4, SBIFF 2011.

I have to start out by saying that I will never forgot this film.  That Side of a Shadow was my most memorable time at this years 2011 Santa Barbara Film Festival. Ricky Fosheim’s directorial debut brings a soon to be cult classic to the silver screen in a dramatic way. It is a film about two friends who must work together to help pay off a debt in twenty four hours or their lives will be cut short.

The lead acting by Jeffrey Baker and Dillon Tucker was amazing. Tucker plays Isaac, a mid-twenties loser who constantly gets himself into nasty situations with low life scum. He gets high on cocaine constantly, and ends up getting himself into $23,000 at a poker table with some thugs. He writes a bad check and they tell him he has twenty four hours to pay. When they frisk him down they find his friend Jimmy’s name and address, which brings Jimmy into the whole situation.

Jimmy is also in his mid-twenties, and works at a dead end gas station job. He and his girlfriend Sara (Kristen Erickson) fight about their relationship and future. Jimmy and Sara have a heated fight and Sara leaves. Meanwhile Isaac is running away from an unpaid taxi and ends up at Jimmy’s house to tell him that he owes a lot of money to bad people and they know who he is. Isaac and Jimmy finally decide to rob the gas station that Jimmy works at, and then take the money and double up in Vegas. As the story unfolds, and the characters develop we see that Isaac is completely self destructive, and just will not learn from all of his mistakes. Jimmy helps as best he can, even though he wishes he was not in this horrendous situation, but it just is not enough.

Tucker’s emotional performance as the drugged out Isaac was simply amazing. The way he embodied the character, and made him move in front of the camera was so genuine. The subtle changes in his facial expressions really made me feel right there in the room. I asked Tucker after the screening during the Q&A what it took to get into the psyche of that character. He said that he took examples from some of the people he knows that are like Isaac, in their mid-twenties not doing anything or going anywhere, stuck in L.A. doing drugs and wasting away. He also went on to say that the more he and baker rehearsed the more Isaac became what we saw in the finished product.

As I said before That Side of a Shadow is a must see. I hope that a distributing company picks this film up because it would be a shame for the masses to not see. This movie should be up there with Basketball Diaries and Requiem for a Dream. Ricky Fosheim’s first film gives a great indication that we will hopefully see more great movies in his future career.