(IMAGE: Saban Films)
Saban Films, 2022. 82 minutes. Thriller.
Grade: 2 out of 4
It’s often remarkable how much better a lot of indies are at lighting urban night scenes the way they would actually look. Big studio films want you to see everything, and make the actors look good, but lower-budget productions often do much better at capturing the colors of office light fixtures against the night sky through skyscraper glass, or the blue hues in a car interior driving New York streets in the wee hours. The lighting is the biggest star of Take the Night, a movie set mostly in and around sparsely attended office buildings and darkened homes, with a detour into harsh morning light towards the end. Cinematographer Rainer Lipski and writer-director-star Seth McTigue may not have created the atmosphere of their locations, but they maintain and convey it vividly.
Which is good, because their characters aren’t much more interesting than the sort of folks who would work late and alone in office buildings, or plot mischief in parking garages. Such folks probably wouldn’t have much of a life, and here, one definitely gets that sense. Two young brothers, Rob (Sam Song Li) and William (Roy Huang) run a successful business, but Rob does most of the work, while William is the irresponsible one. With Rob’s birthday coming up, William comes up with a plan partly borne of resentment: he’ll have his brother kidnapped by actual criminals, and brought to the surprise party as a hostage. It’s a plan that’s stupid, probably illegal, and liable to prove without a doubt that indeed, he is the irresponsible one.
It also takes a while to set in motion, and while that’s happening, not much else is. Lead kidnapper-to-be Chad (McTigue) has PTSD flashbacks, which are impressively staged with minimal, subjective POV details and orange filters that convey a lot with a little. When he has one of his gang actually steal a car for the job, that’s the first indication Chad might be thinking bigger than just a quick cash payoff from William. Given access to Rob’s home, he’s hardly going to hold back when there’s plenty of wealth for the taking.
All of this happens veeeery slowly. For an 82-minute feature, Take the Night feels like a short padded to the bare minimum feature length. It also lacks a clear point of view – Rob, as the victim, is the most sympathetic, but the movie is not his story. It’s arguably William’s, or Chad’s, and frankly, neither fellow is what the ladies would call a catch. Not because they’re bad looking – objectively, they’re not – but ones’ resentful and irresponsible, and the other is a war veteran turned criminal who looks like he wants to punch something all the time. Maybe it was a frustrating shoot.
Still, it doesn’t feel right rooting for Chad to rob and assault Rob, any more than it does to hope William’s ridiculous kidnapping stunt goes ahead. Chad’s gang are mildly more sympathetic, suckered in by the promise of easy pickings, but not especially smart. Thankfully, there is a twist; not so thankfully, it’s awkwardly edited in nonlinear fashion that lessons the impact it ought to have. Saw, this is not, though Jonas Wikstrand’s score creates an impressively doomy soundscape.
McTigue the writer can get better, and as a director he’ll eventually get to cast better actors as well (presuming he cast himself out of convenience; if it was out of vanity, that notion might need work too). It’s harder to teach atmosphere, and he’s very good at that part. Three-act structure is easy; world-building is hard. This is indeed a night I want to take in, but I’d rather find another story in progress within this environment than the one at hand.