‘Reloaded’ is a German mid-size film about detective Jimmy Cloud, directed and played by George Tounas, who is caught in a whirlwind of underground activity where he encounters gangsters, murder, prostitution, and drugs. The film is currently feature in the Toronto Independent Film Festival of Cift and also has won a few awards in other film festivals in 2021.
What’s commendable is the effort and dedication George Tounas has done writing, producing, directing, and acting in this short film with a small film crew. It takes a lot of work to be able to wear multiple hats in putting a 40-minute mid-size film and have something to show for it in the film festivals. After watching the film, I anticipate there may be a mix bag of reviews for ‘Reloaded’, but keep in mind it is an independent film with a limited budget and time they had to put this together.
The writing of the film has some nice twists and turns in the story, however what does get in the way of the film is the subpar acting from the characters. The dialogue is decent. However, the delivery of the lines could have been executed better. They feel like there was a lot of actors trying to remember saying the lines making it seem less conversational. In its defense, they do have a small budget and time to get a lot of cast mates and crew to at least get one scene in without flubbing a line.
The musical score on the other hand is well done. It fits in very well for many of the scenes in the movie and sets the proper tone of the theme as a thriller. For example, when there’s an action scene, the music is upbeat to get the sense of fast paced urgency happening in that situation. When things become suspenseful, the piano tones play in minor keys to make things feel like something bad is about to happen.
When watching the action scenes, they could have been tighter in execution. Not sure how many takes were made to film the choreography, but it seems like they had a limited amount of time to play out the actions. The gun fights would have felt more intense if the actors let the audience into their reactions when getting shot.
If you are watching this on headphones, be ready to accept the fact that the audio levels will vary throughout the scenes. Some of the speaking dialogues are distracted by some of the white background noise, which may be due to a lack of a boom mic set up. It might be recorded directly from a camera phone or digital camera and the audio could be picked up from there.
Cinematography set up for each scene is mostly shot medium wide, with a main focus on the characters and their dialogues in the film. Some of the dialogues in each scene looks like it’s stitched together, which breaks the flow of a natural conversation. Going back to the action scenes that were shot, they used a few tricks like speeding up an action to make an attack look a bit more vicious to the audience. It was kind of obvious though, but a good old trick so that the actors minimize possible injury when assaulting a person in the action scene.
Overall, the story is an intriguing one even with all its flaws that might distract away from the film. George Tounas deserves a lot of credit for putting his passion to writing and directing short films, because it takes a LOT of effort to take the time to work on a big project with limited resources around him. The end of the day, he gets the exposure no matter what the reviews say about his films, because he can be the person to tell people that he has something to show for it, and that itself is a huge accomplishment. It is very inspiring for anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the film industry just to go out and make films, because over time, you get better in honing your craft, and you can look back at the validation of calling yourself an actor, writer, producer, and filmmaker. Kudos to George and his film crew.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.