The Gloved Hand of Silent Justice

Have you ever had enough of people who slightly irritate you? Those who talk too loud, play obnoxious instruments, park badly or just get under your skin? Well the woman in this short film certainly did, locking up all the annoying varmints in a mimed central park jail in Palmerston North.

Subversive? To an extent, however this is a difficult film for me to review, because clearly a lot of people liked it based on the first place in audience voting so well done on that because the light hearted humanistic tone of the everyday woman taking action was relatable. But it went with a couple of ideas that are so tricky to pull off in short films that you need to do them perfectly to get them right, mime and narration.

Firstly, the miming. What worked for me was the costuming and physical performance of your actress. This is not a criticism of her, or a criticism of your choices to go with a mime. It can work, but I personally feel that to work on film it needs to be intimate. If you're watching a mime street perfomer there is a degree of closeness with the very deliberate moments.
So on film for that to translate to the screen we either need to see that closeness, or that exaggeration, as well as potentially sound (which admittedly was done well here) to sell the effect if you're crossing into the metpahysical realm, where mime jails for example hold prisoners. If the mime activity is sold with long shots then there is a distance that just makes it come across as flat in my opinion.

Secondly the narration. This is such a common trope in 48 Hours now, and honestly I think I have come across more of it in 2021 than any single year by a mile, that I need something clear as to why it is being used. Not just to explain a character's motivations, but to stand out from the pack.

I've got no qualms about the genre element. In fact it being open whether this was an origin story or someone putting the costume back on worked in its favour. The idea was good that they were seeking justice, and the everyday crimes they were taking action against was very relatable.

My last nitpick was a couple of audio pops early, but technically pretty good as always from Outcasts otherwise.

Obviously I may be coming across as a bugbear over a couple of issues that may have only been issues for me. I apologise for the negativity I am just being honest.

Story: 1.5/5
Technical: 3/5
Elements: 2/5
Overall: 2/5