Darkly comic tale in Central Park

REMEDY (2005)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

Shot on a miniscule budget of a little over 100,000, "Remedy" is at times effective and downright silly. Still, considering what often passes for vague entertainment in theaters nowadays, it has its own brand of thrills to keep people from switching off and watching a dreadful reality show.

Christian Maelen (who directed the film) convincingly plays Will, an artist who sells his canvases on the street for pennies. His buddy and coke-sniffing connection, Josh (Nicholas Reiner, the film's screenwriter), needs to borrow money to pay off 15 big ones to Tom (Rick Aiello). Will refuses thanks to his pregnant wife (Candice Coke), who sniffs coke on occasion. Nobody will lend a helping hand to Joshua. One night, while Will is truly coked-up, Josh is murdered with a bullet to the abdomen. Will is the prime suspect and pretty soon the cops are interrogating all of Will's friends, determining who the culprit could be. Is it Tom, the truly abusive drug dealer who is sweetly innocent one second and psychotic the next? The dentist (Jon Doscher) who thinks he's a smoothie with the ladies? The dentist's girlfriend who agrees to a menage a trois as well as having lesbian girlfriend on the side? Or is it Will's wife who hopes he will clean up and move to a French villa?

"Remedy" is a strange amalgam of a police procedural whodunit mixed with the yuppie party scene and a dose of a mystery thriller thrown in for good measure. The police detective scenes are as realistic as they get (thought not as well-shot as TV's "Law and Order"), thanks to the authentic casting of actor Arthur J. Nascarella as Detective Lynch, himself a former New York City cop. I could've lived without a brief laughable chase to a wall facing Central Park yet, on the whole, a fair sense of realism pervades any scene with Nascarella.

The yuppie party scene is depicted in bars and bathrooms where excessive drinking and coke-sniffing occur - are we watching an 80's Bret Easton Ellis adaptation? We also get some lesbian sex scenes and a few shots of a strip club for those who like that sort of thing. And for those who like belly laughs, intentional or otherwise, there is a scene involving the dentist and an older patient that is practically cringe-worthy.

The mystery thriller section of the plot is the most compelling of the entire film, as the last half-hour dovetails into Agatha Christie whodunit mode. The filmmakers call this a "darkly comic tale" and I happen to agree. It is clear the acting is not top-notch and what passes for style is a bunch of close-ups and the most rudimentary, underutilized locations, including bars, apartments, and some outdoor locations. (In fact, whole scenes at a supposed ritzy bar are so tightly shot that it resembles someone's apartment that just happens to have a bar.) But you can't complain when you're dealing with first-timers and limited budgets (Wes Anderson's debut "Bottle Rocket" was just as tightly shot.)

Despite some uneven pacing and editing, "Remedy" has fine support from pros like Nascarella, Frank Vincent as Will's uncle, Vincent Pastore in an atypical role as an art dealer, and even former KISS band member Ace Frehley as an aging, amused drug dealer who's heard it all. And Christian Maelen's mentally tortured junkie, Will, is a like a cross between John Amplas's Martin from Romero's "Martin" and Cillian Murphy from "28 Days Later" - the fragile yuppie junkie who has given up on life. He gives "Remedy" a short injection of heart and soul.