Ten ‘Til Noon

Reissued on DVD 2007

Crime Drama

Shut Up and Shoot Pictures

Sony Home Entertainment

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

I finally got around to watching this rather underrated drama. Now I’m sorry I waited so long. It really is a superb piece of dark suspense.

Between 11:50 a.m. and noon a number of people’s lives are going to change. We start with the killing of a business executive for an unexplained reason and progress towards the explanation over that same time period, character by character, as the background and plot develop.

There are double-crosses, sex, murders, hired killers, and maybe just a little love and compassion. The explanation is always just that little bit further away, so we go on to the next character for the next bit of information. Director Scott Storm doles this out sparingly and we still don’t quite understand until the last segment – and even then the very last scene throws our understanding into doubt again. I can’t say much more about the plot without giving it away, but it’s edge-of-the-seat all the way.

There are many powerful performances. Alfonso Freeman is superb as Mr Jay, the suave hired killer who likes to play with his victim’s emotions first, but Paul Alessi as the bodyguard / killer/ cleanup man is more menacing in his quiet emotionless efficiency. Writer Paul Osborne has given each character a role they can really work with and it’s a pity that many of their appearances are fairly short. Even a minor role like Jenya Lano’s Miss Milch (Mr Jay’s offsider) is played to perfection.

Scott Storm doesn’t have much of a film history to his name yet, but if this is the standard of his work he has a great future ahead of him. There are a lot of antisocial moments in the film but he has managed them without going over the top with blood and gore and special effects. This restraint somehow makes the film even more effective regardless of whether it was brought about by a low budget or not.

There are two negatives. In the cover picture Alfonso Freeman looks a lot like Morgan Freeman. I don’t know if this was deliberate but it could be misleading. The other point is that sometimes the dialogue verges on corny. These moments are thankfully brief and don’t really detract from what is a great film.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.6 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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