Big Muddy puts a Canadian spin on neo noir
Starring Nadia Litz and Justin Kelly. Rated PG.
Noir isn’t as easy as it looks. And Big Muddy isn’t exactly The Maltese Falcon, but young director Jefferson Moneo, expanding on his 2011 short of the same name, definitely gets some of the key ingredients of that dark, postwar movie trend.
Guns and fatalism are obvious parts, but often missing in wink-wink genre updates is moral seriousness marked by a swooning weakness for beauty—whether it’s about that dame or the single street lamp illuminating an abandoned Edward Hopper–style building. Shooting in rural Saskatchewan, Moneo (working again with cinematographer Craig Trudeau, who also shot Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine) trades urban claustrophobia for wide-screen vistas, racetracks at night, and the occasional roadhouse, where small people feel big for a few hours.
It’s not clear why Martha Barlow (Nadia Litz) is willing to pull off petty crimes, and worse, with current boyfriend Tommy (Rossif Sutherland). But she is trying to make ends meet for teenage son Andy (Degrassi’s Justin Kelly), who has already turned Mom’s equestrian passion into a gambling addiction. The track is where he meets good girl June (Holly Deveaux) and bad man Buford (James Le Gros), who has a new horse and an unresolved thing for Andy’s mom.
Meanwhile, Andy’s never-met dad—a scary career criminal played by Quebec stalwart David La Haye—has busted out of prison and is probably looking for her, too. That’s the suspicion of her own estranged father, a hard-drinking farmer played by ever-grouchy Stephen McHattie. Think they’ll all meet before it’s over?
Even for these naturally taciturn types, too much of the dialogue is of the pedestrian, “What’s your problem?” variety. And cool as it might be to cast the tiny, unconventionally pretty Litz—better known for quirky, Ellen Page–type comedies—as the femme fatale, the script gives us little reason to grasp why so many brutish dudes are drawn to her inexorable flame.
That said, the film’s gorgeous, colour-saturated images do most of the heavy lifting, perfectly supported by music that veers between twangy alt-country and an ominous original brass score.
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