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Directed by Beau Fowler
Starring Beau Fowler and Sonny Louis
Short Film Review by Annie Vincent
Cool and captivating, Beau Fowler’s latest short, Express Delivery, is definitely worth seeing.
Swifty (Beau Fowler) is a cocky New-Yorker dragged from the boot of a BMW by a sharp, suave bounty hunter named The Postman (Sonny Louis). Swifty seems pretty nonchalant about this, not even waking initially and then asking for a cigarette whilst trying to engage his captor in banal conversation. In a bid to shut him up, The Postman agrees to giving him a cigarette, but he doesn’t receive a polite ‘thank you’ for his generosity. What follows is a gripping and excellently-choreographed martial arts battle to the death, with a couple of surprising plot twists revealed for the finale.
Express Delivery has recently won a couple of short film awards and it is easy to see why. The camerawork is creative from the start. During the opening montage, a series of zoom shots introduce us to The Postman: meticulous and severe – characteristics intensified by the camera angles. Later, the martial arts sequence offers further opportunities to see Robert Beck’s (Director of Photography) work, with the cameras sticking closely to both men. One of the best moments is the canted shot sequence which follows The Postman’s line of sight, including when he lands on his back and looks back at the, now, upside-down Swifty. The cameraman does his best to engage us in this fight, not just place us on the sideline as voyeurs. Both Fowler and Louis (a stuntman on Justice League, Wonderwoman and Game of Thrones) are impressive martial artists and the sequence is expertly delivered. The scene is brutal, but gripping and it isn’t always clear what the outcome of the battle will be, which prevents the predictability we sometimes see in other films.
Supporting all this is a cool soundtrack, which employs some intense base but almost Western-style guitar riffs and some smirk-worthy dialogue from Fowler, which draws the audience to him immediately. Whilst both men are impressive in battle, it is the cock-sure ruffian, Swifty, we want to know more about. A tiny criticism is that Fowler’s accent could do with a tweak, but it’s still a pretty good effort, especially for a British actor.
The film is left open and it would be great to see more from Swifty and his involvement with ‘Miss Jackson’, but until then, this is definitely a short film worth catching.
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