'In a Push, The Pusher Trips' by Faizal Mazlan - SIFF

When the titles came out, I thought the title was famous quote from a book or teaser to the film that was about to unfold. I would like to use the word 'unfold' to characterise most of the film. Oweing to its non-linear fashion of story-telling and its dotted punctuation of emotional outbursts, it is sometimes easy to be lost in its storyline. James, ths protagonist, a shifty and restless young man seems mired in a drug-dealer's web. he may look clean but he' got a lot of shady characters around him. Weighing down on ths side of his moral struggle is his wife who seems to be lost and subsequently distressed. In turns out that he's lost his trading ware - drugs while his wife suffered somthing a miscarriage at the same time.

The situation seems like it belongs to a Hollywood crime blockbuster, which makes the film genre a little too ambitious for its production values. A little more strategic lighting would have improved the visual and dramatic effect of the film, something to the effect of highlighting fears and anxiety of their faces, shadows, sweat etc. Instead, it was mostly quite dimly-lit throughout the film. Also, many of the sequences were more like flashes, never really giving me a chance to breathe in the scene. Except for the portion when the wife breaks news of the miscarriage. Perhaps it was like a narrative anchor for me because someone finally speaks her heart out after all the frenzy.
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