Features review - DETONATOR by Keir Politz and Damon Maulucci

Leave the memories alone. The former frontman of a punk band is forced to revisit his past in Detonator, by Keir Politz and Damon Maulucci, which was shown at the 59th Cork Film Festival.
 
When we first meet Sully (Lawrence Micheal Levine), he is about to sell off his prized amp in order to buy some furniture for a family home. Dressed in office clothes, you would hardly believe he was once a 'contender' who could have been somebody in a Punk rock band from Philadelphia. Now, however, he is trying to shut off his past but somehow unable to entirely do so. Then out of the blue, his ex-bandmate Mike (Benjamin Ellis Fine) pops up promising to make good an old debt and somehow manages to drag him to the street of Philadelphia where he is reluctantly forced into a plan to a lawsuit after he steals an old tape they recorded in order to file a lawsuit of plagiarism against a band that made it big.

 

Despite the minimal budget and tight schedule, Detonator by Politz and Maulucci is quite as gripping story that manages to stay entertaining and emotionally engaging as well as suspenseful without resorting to drastically raising its tone and retaining quite a tasteful and genuine approach to its story. Not to mention that the very fact that this film takes place during the course of one night was tricky in itself and could have affected things like continuity and rhythm. The film, however, not only manages to keep a constantly fluid pace that ensures an almost complete lack of dead moments, but also manages to make the darkness of the Philadelphia night look great due to a careful cinematography that embraces obscurity rather than shying away from it.
 
Being a character driven story, however, great performances were needed. These great performances were delivered, particularly by the two leading actors Lawrence Micheal Levine and Benjamin Ellis Fine. They appear in virtually every scene together and their chemistry seems quite natural and for that reason immensely believable. But what also works is their individual understanding of the nature of their characters as being profoundly different - Sully being much more restrained and reserved whilst Mike on the other hand is a lot more exhuberant and seems to be stuck in teenage recklessness more despite his scruffy, messy and aged outlook.
 
Fascinating in itself is the key element of punk rock, an element which never quite takes over Detonator but is indeed important both on a strictly narrative level and a more symbolic one. Punk rock by its very nature is an extreme cultural expression of youth revolt and anarchy, one which may become aged and particularly regretted by impending adulthood. But as well as that, it is nice to see the film emerge right out of its urban setting of Philadelphia, an urban setting that adds a further depth to the film and even ends up becoming a character of the film in its own right.