LOVE BOMB is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime
Review by Roy Frumkes
Film Noir music clues us in about the nature of the experience ahead, though not what that experience will be. And the unfolding narrative is both clever and mean-spirited to its core.
LOVE BOMB is essentially a three-character play, and one might assume that this made it easier to direct. Also it unfolds basically in one large set, which one might think made it more time-efficient to shoot.
Wrong! On both accounts!
There is far more responsibility on the actors’ and director’s shoulders when dealing with so small an ensemble. Fortunately the Casting Director and the Director were one and the same here, and the performances are pitch perfect.
As for the large, somewhat surreal location, that presents another challenge. A location like this can quickly go South if its elements are not apportioned carefully and cleverly. I’m sure we all remember Marlon Brando, incontestably one of the greatest actors of the past two thousand years (cavemen indulged in pantomime, right?) Well it’s noted in a commentary track and from people he worked with that, despite his gift, he insisted on having only limited redundancies of both camera angles or background set elements in frame, otherwise a sense of stagnation would bleed into his performance no matter how good he was. Hence, LOVE BOMB’s director’s additional burden, and it was wise that director/casting director David Guglielmo made the decision to carry the double-departmental weight on his shoulders. Problems become less difficult to surmount with fewer creative hands at the helm.
There are elements of Ken Russell’s mischievous CRIMES OF PASSION, David Fincher’s oppressive THE GAME, and Takashi Miike’s ghoulish slow-burn, AUDITION, lurking between the frames in this story, but since so much is dependent on how little you know going in and going forward, I’m loathe to reveal elements of the plot. I can, however, praise the cast. Jessie Andrews is Anna, and she brings subtle shadings to a juicy role. (On the internet one of her qualities is listed as “modern woman” – a rather charming euphemism.) Josh Caras essays the role of a terminal nerd so adroitly that it’s painful, and Zane Holtz as Tom plays a handsome sociopath with conviction.
Underneath the manipulative head games lie the very real paranoid concerns about today’s internet. One has to pause and rethink the figures our government puts out representing yearly incidents of violence, rape and murders. One can’t help but wonder if they’re really taking cyber-crime into account…
Of special note: I’m always on the look-out for extraordinary final shots to wrap up a film, and they’re hard to come by. The all-time front runner is Charlie Chaplin’s final close-up in CITY LIGHTS. But there are others – RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE SEARCHERS, THIS ISLAND EARTH, KISS ME DEADLY, THE CIRCUS, SOME LIKE IT HOT, – to name a bunch.
The closing image of LOVE BOMB now belongs in that rarified pantheon. It is quite elegant, and leaves us in a thought-provoking mood.