There is no cause for confusion in the rather strange matters of film financing; a movie say, “5lbs of Pressure” takes place in Manhattan while it is produced in Manchester, England for some reasons. While the reasoning seems to hold well on the face of it, perhaps the industrial city in the UK is less convincingly gritty than NYC these days and this is the reason why it was done — it might explain why writer-director Phil Allocco’s film ‘crime-melodrama’ currently released by Lionsgate feels more like it was made somewhere in the distant and imaginary genre-land of cinema rather than an actual, living, breathing location. True, it does not cripple the violent thriller aspects of the film, but it does restrain our emotional participation in the film’s two-dimensional characters, whom we are asked to regard as tragic figures.
The phrase “5lbs of Pressure” is taken from the phrase that refers to the weight necessary to pull the gun trigger. The film weaves a rather amusing plot of misunderstandings, conflicts and tainted destinies of different ominous characters. Those lines criss-cross in the kind of Noo Yawk neighborhood that seems little changed from the one seen in Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” more than a half-century ago – or so it applies in its constituent parts.
“5lbs of Pressure” is a thought-provoking, entertaining and aesthetically beautifully completed project. But it is not deeply memorable. The issue is that Allocco’s characters are largely constructed around their external struggles with each other; there’s no real internal self, and they’re certainly not in a narrative that extends beyond the punk stereotype.
The viewer is shifted back in time with cards that read, “Four days earlier,” after a flashback of seemingly senseless gunfire in a bar and the man Adam DeSalvo Luca Evans flashes back. These events are occurring at the moment when Adam, having spent 16 years in prison and another 3 years serving probation after being charged for committing a murder during a stupid street fight, finds himself close to the end of his probation period.
He has never been in trouble with the law during the probation period, but it hasn’t been easy for him to start afresh in a different place. Instead, he went back to the area where his problems began despite the fact that it puts him at risk of receiving the revenge he so desperately wanted to avoid — the revenge of Eli, his victim’s brother, and his mother.
The viewer then meets Adam who has hit rock bottom and lives in the abandoned warehouse of a friend but has hope to reconnect with his ex-wife and son. But Donna Stephanie Leonidas does not even want to communicate with him. As these events unfold, the viewer realizes Adam’s son, a teenage boy named Jimmy Rudy Pankow, also does not know about Adam’s existence and believes that his father deserted both him and his mother. Despite all this, Adam arrives at the conclusion that contacting both of them would be a wise decision.
On the flip side, the environment of toxic masculinity combined with the organized milieu of crime that presumably got the ex-con hooked has also been thriving. Leff (Alex Pettyfer) has a good business going, he is a drug dealer, however he has a dimwitted nephew by the name of Mike (Rory Culkin) who is good for nothing but being a gofer. However what Mike really wants is to be a rock musician – a hope that is completely shared by his best friend Eli. Mike is foolish to think that he can achieve that dream of becoming a rock star by scoring big and evading the stern and very watchful Leff.
Obviously that does not look like a scheme that is going to work considering how brutal the other criminal elements who are played by Lorraine Burroughs and James Oliver Wheatley are. As the situation becomes tense, Adam’s re-emergence into the area raises eyebrows particularly that of Eli’s as he is already mad due to having issues with his on and off girlfriend, Lori (Savannah Steyn).
Pretty much all of the interpersonal relationships and interactions that take place here are very combative and aggressive. That might be a little less routine, had the characters possessed any discernible private lives, or were at least sometimes the focus of irony.
Even Adam, who is painted exclusively as a sorry nice guy, the character with very little remaining of the little rioter that he was, is one of them.
This was not necessarily the case with a few performers who took the stereotype too far in one direction or other, but in general the actors try to stick to naturalism wherever possible, even if the action is violent or grotesque. (For instance, Gary McDonald as an enforcer has some very stunning scenes where he just destroys late debtors’ eyes). But still, the cast rarely seems to be suggesting to themselves fully that there is any reality that is depicted in the film that is verbatim not from a pulp teepee — and yes, the film demands that we feel for the characters who are endowed with such grief.
The shift from the high melodrama to the clip provided rhythm perfectly accented with other Scott events sound and movement, melodrama quite often characterized Allison And Sara Dean such cinematography, convincingly combined with the polished camera angles of the main characters of the video: intense vivid colors and sharp stylized lighting.
These clichés would be effective in a crime movie with the emotional weight of Donnie Brasco. They work less well here, in one where one does not feel moved to more compassionate portrayals of hard-case Donny espressoing her habitual criminal ex with ‘You’ve got to be out of your mind to come over this.’ As a fiction which contains some engrossing vignettes of the hair-trigger variety with the expectation that a few will be killed, Iqbal Reports finds its aim when it expects its viewers to grieve those murders as more than a cliché in crime quarter.
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