The Protégé

Louis Findlay’s curious short The Protégé (also known as The Protégé: Part One) opens with a touching montage of videos that show romantic bliss between Sophie (Crofts) and her husband, a couple clearly made up with happiness and the joys of life. However, the ominous music that accompanies it immediately gives the sad impression that this love doesn’t have a happy ending.

And true enough, we then jump forward to find Sophie alone in a bar wistfully replaying these videos on her phone, tears pooling in her eyes before in walks the mysterious Sean (Findlay), a man that would appear to be a notorious gun for hire, a man Sophie wants to kill the man that killed her husband.

From there, the film sets itself out to be a story about choices, about making that decision to set yourself down a path of no return. Instead of Sean taking the job, he offers Sophie an alternative, to train her to be able to carry out the task herself.

It's an interesting story, and if this is indeed to be the first part of a bigger whole, there is undoubtedly a lot of intriguing potential this film could expand into. But in its current standalone form, The Protégé acts almost like a highlight reel of what would be the real, much more compelling story rather than feeling like a complete one itself, an extended trailer of sorts for a much more promising venture.

Leaving things open-ended here in part one does mean that if other parts are forthcoming, the film has already done a decent amount of groundwork to have a running start in future installments, the why and for what already established quite effectively here meaning more room for exploration going forward, and everything that is played out with regards to Sophie’s future if she were to accept works as a pure hypothetical, with enough revelations and history hinted at here that could blow this whole thing wide open.

What is also encouraging for any future works Findlay pursues either in this universe or others, is their innate talent for dynamic storytelling in their films. The Protégé‘s delivery gets across a lot of key information not just very leanly but in a very short space of time, which allows us to get exactly what we need for a full picture and then simply enjoy watching how it all unfolds. Between that and two strong leads in both Crofts and Findlay himself, the sky could be the limit here, it’s just not given its full chance to show itself in these six minutes however.

The Protégé is a deftly executed appetiser-type film that teases somewhat more than it delivers, but it works as a great proof of concept piece that will hopefully encourage someone somewhere to invest even more in a talent such as Findlay’s.