Next up is the overly ambitious festive felony thriller Christmas Crime Story from 2017 which tries the whole multiple narrative thing following a bunch of characters whose lives clash together in a series of yuletide tragedies. There’s a lot to digest with this one that all kicks off with a botched robbery, but it’s all pretty depressing as it strains to show how clever it is. Richard Friedman’s film brings us six vignettes telling different gritty tales all from the same timeline but each from the perspective of a different character. Even more ambitiously, Memento-style, each segment is meticulously laid out in backwards order so as to slowly tease out each character’s true motives. It’s a shame, then, that the actual plot, dialogue and performances are all pretty poor and the whole thing is drowning in a sea of cliches and pure melodrama.
Chris (Scott Bailey) is an L.A. detective attempting to reconnect with his estranged mother Maggie (Mary-Margaret Humes) who runs the little diner where all our stories collide on Christmas Eve night. He’s about to become a father, if not for a fateful traffic stop. David (Adrian Paul) is a photographer who has a tumultuous relationship with his ladyfriend Sasha (Neraida Bega) who plans to have him bumped off by a local mobster. Sasha is cheating on him with Jason (Aaron Perilo) a crook who, weirdly, also works as a street corner Santa. I’m not sure I’d pick this guy over the semi-successful photographer but never mind.
Oh yeah, there’s also another street corner Santa named Randall (Eric Close) who’s down on his luck, has a kid dying of cancer (again?!?) and manages to find himself mixed up in all this business through mistaken identity.
If that’s not enough, it turns out David is also schizophrenic and sees an imaginary friend who keeps asking him to do scary things, like chop up his missus and bury her. Hhmmmmmm. Maybe he’s not such a keeper after all.
The tragedy and misery are laid on thick and most of the characters are pretty loathsome, spitting out overwritten dialogue. This film feels almost like a big ‘fuck you’ to the cheery cheese of Hallmark/Lifetime et al, a concept that might be cool if any of this felt plausible but the acting here rarely stops sounding like people just reading words right off the page. What’s worse is that it’s a very talky film, low on action and it gets very repetitive.
Though the ‘imaginary friend’ element is intriguing, it doesn’t feel fully explored and the script never finds a way to satisfyingly tie up all these stories. Instead (SPOILER - I think?) it’s suggested that time turns back and everything works out fine? Or something? So, we can file this one under ‘ambitious, well-intentioned but confusing mess.’
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