Blow The Man Down

Was sent my first #QuarantineLife screener code for a film that normally would have been a part of my weekly theater screenings, but now with our new normal, it went straight to VOD (now available on Amazon Prime).  It’s written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy and had its world premiere last year at Tribeca Film Festival.

The film starts off moody and atmospheric with fisherman singing sad songs in a small town off the coast of Maine.  Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) have just buried their mother Mary Margaret Connolly and it seems all the town has come for her repast; including Mary Margaret’s life long girlfriends, all now in their 70’s – Susie Gallagher (June Squibb), Doreen Burke (Marceline Hugot), and Gail Maguire (Annette O’Toole).  We find out later one important old friend is absent, Enid Nora Devlin (Margo Martindale) and the why is the crux of the story.

However, the main plot involves Mary Beth, she’s the wilder, restless, unkept sister who had plans to leave the small nautical village for a college somewhere far off, but stayed a year to help her sister Priscilla take care of their dying mother. Now she’s raring to go, but Priscilla is hoping she’ll stay as she needs help at the fish market and paying the mortgage on their house, nearly in foreclosure. Mary Beth’s ambivalence as to go or stay drives her to the local watering hole, where she starts flirting with an unsavory type.  With her judgement impaired with liqueur, she leaves with him, but quickly sobers up when she finds a gun in the glove box and blood in the trunk of his car. Next thing you know, it’s a harpoon to the neck and a brick to the head.  Was the guy gonna do her harm or was he just chasing her because she started running? We’ll, never know…

Of course the local constabulary (Skipp Sudduth & Will Brittain) plays a big part in the town, official yet folksy, they know everyone and everyone knows them, getting fed pie, which they eat with such gusto you’d think they weren’t just gonna get more pie the next day. They are investigating a different death which eventually ties into Mary Beth’s killing, giving the movie a whodunnit kinda quality.

 “Blow The Man Down” is laid out like a novel, very character and town driven, with secrets that go back many years; but as it’s a movie, it doesn’t have the time to pull you into everyone the way you would if it was a book or TV series, so I was left a little empty at the end.  All the elements are there, I wish I’d been able to feel more invested.

Tinsel & Tine @ largeassmovieblogs rating 2.5 outta 5