From New Zealand, 2001’s Stickmen shows that no budget and no access to fancy digital effects doesn’t mean no movie. Like many an independent movie, it’s quite good even though it wasn’t made in Hollywood.
The central plot revolves around pub pool and a high stakes tournament sponsored by the local mobster. We know who Daddy is because he owns the escort service and because he cuts people up when they don’t repay the loans he’s made them. And Daddy isn’t too happy when Jack, Wayne, and Thomas, our heroes, turn out to be quite the players after the three are assigned long odds in the tournament.
In the middle of the movie, the two main female characters Karen and Sara are talking in a bar. Karen tells a story about a man and says, “The moral of the story is that men are stupid.” Sara responds, “That’s the moral to a million stories.” I suppose they’re right, though it was the accents that made it sound so hot. These two are quite integral to the ending, in a surprising way.
I was quite surprised to find that this is the first film Hamish Rothwell directed and the first screenplay Nick Ward wrote, not to mention the first starring/significant roles for most of the cast. The script has very few obvious flaws, coincidences, or bad choices–as I wrote this sentence I checked IMDB and found out, sure enough, that it won a bunch of the top prizes at the 2001 New Zealand Film and TV Awards: Scott Wills (as Wayne) for Best Actor, Ward for Best Screenplay, Rothwell for Best Director, and Luanne Gordon (as the honest prostitute Lulu) for Best Supporting Actress in her first feature film
According to the film’s website, Stickmen (the name under which our boys team for the tournament), was one of the half dozen most profitable movies made in NZ in the past 20 years, as well as one of the first NZ-produced films to merit a DVD release.
Definitely recommended, cheers for Tivo!
BillSaysThis 