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Written & Directed by James Short
Starring Gerald Maliqi, Kizzt Romer-Lee, Tristan Barnard and Craig McKinnon.
Short Film Review by Rachel Pullen
Being a spy, for some a childhood dream after watching too many James Bond films, for some it's real life and for others its an unobtainable reality, so what do you do if you love espionage, women, fast cars and sipping whiskey from fancy crystal glasses? Well you become a filmmaker and produce a series of spy films of course.
Well James Short did just that with his second instillation of spy films called Mission Revoked, the sequel to his earlier film Mission Abandoned, I have yet to see the first but no worries, picking up the storyline is as easy as picking up herpes in the red light district...not that I would know.
Mission Revoked tells the story of Jordan Blade, a spy who is sent on a mission from the top dogs to assassinate a millionaire who is getting up to all kinds of mischief with some terrorist, but quickly he discovers that there is some wrong doings within his company when he finds out that his association has been sold out which he must put a stop to, I mean he is a spy he has to keep up his fancy lifestyle, redundancy is not an option for this chap.
This from the get go is clearly a student film. How do I know this? Well most of it is shot within the college, prominently the media classroom, the obligatory pulp fiction posters on the walls are a dead giveaway, and while a student film is not a bad thing, look at Evil Dead, but if your gonna shoot a B-movie ensure you scout a good location.
Typically they use the college to the best of their abilities, things such as lighting and camera angles are used professionally and with ease, clearly educated well on the art of filmmaking director James Short parades his natural abilities behind the camera within this piece.
Sadly his choice of actors brings up some challenges in regards to believability, some such as Gerald Maliqi and Kizzt Romer-Lee display confidence and a good level of acting abilities on the screen but others not so much, Short could focus on stimulating their performance a little more in order to produce a higher quality product, but at the end of the day we must remember these are young men and women making their first footprints in the world in regards to their craft and so these attempts must be viewed with their infancy in mind.
Enjoyable with a creative story line Mission Revoked is a good start to working within the industry as well as an interesting choice of genre for such a young director to take on.
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