Partners [2009]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Dear All Male Aspiring Writer/Director/Producers,
You are not Martin Scorsese. You will never be Martin Scorsese. We already have a Martin Scorsese, and we don't need another one. 
Sincerely, The Bad Movie Night Crew.

After "Turf War" and "Checkmate" we thought we might be done with low budget, poorly written gangster movies for a while but alas here we are with "Partners." I never thought I would long so much for Tommy Wiseau's delusions of Tennessee Williams or Neil Breen's Lynchian sensibilities. This movie is the brain child of Peter James Iengo, a supposed college professor of "storytelling" (in spite of him only seeming to have a bachelors degree in creative writing). I don't know what college he teaches at or what their standards are, but I did learn this by reading the author biography on his self-published book.

The plot is pretty standard: two cops who are partners with different personalities try to take down a gangster doing a really bad Joker impression. Things happen. There's a jazz singer lady who gets to do a whole song, creating a neo noir vibe that is never replicated again. The camera is out of focus roughly 40% of the time. The dialogue is bland and repetitive. The production value is surprisingly higher than that of "Turf War" in terms of them having some real looking sets and costumes, but the camera work shows a lack of basic understanding of film rules. Characters who are supposed to be conversing with each other are looking in opposite directions. An Italian mafia guy with a pizza restaurant keeps looking at his lines on the table in between cuts. You can visibly see the moment the director told them to start walking and then never editing out the point where they are stationary. It's not "Black Ninja" levels of bad film making, but it's definitely got that high school foreign language class video vibe.

It's okay as a bad film albeit a little boring. I personally melted into the couch at around the hour mark when I realized the film would never top our pre-movie shows: "Psalty The Song Book 1," a video of kids singing about Jesus, and the Kazoo Kid video.