- Directed by Michael Pierro
- Written by Michael Pierro
- Stars Nathanael Chadwick, Reece Presley, Lauren Welchner
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-C5GnJQ68
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
We weren’t sure going into this one, the trailer looked iffy. But it turns out the trailer doesn’t do it justice. It was very good. Nathanael Chadwick is perfectly cast in the lead, which is good since the majority of the movie is about him driving around and doing stuff. It moves well as things get more complicated through the night. We both liked it a lot.
Spoilery Synopsis
A man drives a car as the credits roll. D, the driver, eats his generic fast food in the car and gets a phone call from his landlord, which he ignores. His girlfriend calls and asks when he’s coming home, but this is Friday, the day that pays the best. She complains that there’s no WiFi; he probably didn’t pay the bill.
He opens the VRMR! App, a rideshare thing. He picks up people and takes them where they want to go, and he does a variety of weird characters that are all critical. They. Are. Annoying.
One of the clients offers him a business card for Tonomo, a new company that offers better pay and a signing bonus. Four or five thousand dollars a night, with the right attitude. He doesn’t actually say it’s legal, but D thinks about it. D calls VRMR! on the phone, and it’s the usual annoying runaround with the voice system and “hold music.” He wants to get paid early, but that’s not going to happen.
He keeps on driving and picks up two drunk women, one of whom pukes all over his back seat. It costs even more money to wash the car. The VRMR! app says it’s time for a mandatory 8-hour break.
He calls Nick with Tonomo about the job. Nick installs an app on D’s phone. D signs the mile-long “Terms and Conditions” page. “Always do what the app tells you; never speak to the clients. If you quit in the middle of a job, you lose all your money.”
D hits “Start,” and the app tells him where to go. He misses a turn and that already cost him a deduction penalty. He gets to the destination, and the app has him wait. He picks up a woman and drives her where the app says to go. As he drives, she changes into an angel costume. He drops her off in an alley, but she wants him to wait for her.
The payment for the job comes to $100. The next job is for $500, but he promised the girl he’d wait. He accepts the job anyway and drives on. The whole thing has a lot of time pressure, so he has no choice. On this job, he just carries a package.
D stops and a man gets in, and he’s loud and obnoxious; he says he’s a pusher. D drops the guy odd and continues with the package. He goes around the block and the app tells him to pick up the same guy. It looks a lot like he’s a getaway driver now. D and the man argue over the route, but D insists on following the app. The man gives D a gun to dispose of and some drugs as a tip. He ends up with $450 for that job.
Between jobs, D tastes one of the drug-coated sugar cubes the man gave him but doesn’t really take it.
He takes on another $500 job. This one has him move to the back seat next to a passenger and hit the man. “It’s OK, just do it,” says the man. D does the job. Each punch is $50, again and again. It gets easier for D around the fourth punch. With all the bonuses, he makes a bunch.
The app tells him to “rest now.” He uses the time to clean up the blood on the back seat. He goes back to the place he dropped off the angel woman, but she’s not there.
The next job is $2000. Before accepting, he tries one of the sugar cubes. They stop and pick up two girls, one is very high or drunk, and it might be a matter of sex trafficking. She cries and fights, and D just sits there. About this time, the drugs D took start kicking in. He sits there while the brother and sister carry the stoned girl into a warehouse. When they come out, they yell at each other and then start making out on the hood of the car.
D starts seriously hallucinating now, but he’s also driving where he needs to go. Something went wrong with the girl they dropped off, so they need another one. They stop and grab the girl with the angel wings from earlier. They drive back to the sex trafficking warehouse, and the brother and sister have to deal with a more immediate problem.
D digs out that gun from earlier. He gives the angel girl the other sugar cube, and she wakes right up. The two run away from the car but the two soon catch and beat up D. The car itself rescues D from the evil pair.
“Job abandoned: Payout $0” D loses all the money for the evening’s work.
He gets back in his car and drives away. VRBR! sends him a text asking if he wants to drive some more, which he accepts. Back to the grind…
Brian’s Commentary
The trailer didn’t do this one justice. It’s mostly just one guy and a few passengers, very simple. For quite a ways into this, I was thinking, “I’d do this job,” but then it got a bit excessive.
The jobs weren’t that hard from D’s point of view, I dunno what he thought was going to happen taking LSD or whatever it was during the work.
It was well shot, looked good, nicely paced, and kept my interest throughout. Very cool!
Kevin’s Commentary
I like being pleasantly surprised by a movie, and this is one that does that. The trailer looked like a maybe, and it turned out to be a winner. Things build nicely and move well, with just enough dark humor to spice it up. I’d recommend it.
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