A group of four meth addicts — David (Tom Pelphrey), Donald (Neal Bledsoe), Kari (Summer Corckett Moore), and Spot (Harris Doran) are broke and in need to score. David approaches their dealer, Tai (Anthony Ruivivar), hoping for a “favor.” Tai says he’ll give them some drugs if they can get him a television for his mother’s birthday. The foursome then plan to break into a house in a nice neighborhood and steal a television. David picks a house that he recently saw moving trucks in front of — he assumes the family hasn’t had time to install security systems — and the four addicts break into the house.
Few movies pull off a tonal shift as successfully as Junction. The opening scenes depict a group of addicts who only seem to enjoy each others’ company as long as the meth lasts. Their bumbling robbery skills are humorous, and the comments they make about things are funny in the sense that they would be remarkably obvious or uninteresting to people who aren’t strung out on drugs. But once Donald discovers a disturbing secret while robbing the house there are few laughs left in the movie. This sudden transition makes Donald’s discovery all the more startling.
As they debate what to do about what they discovered, the father of the family, Connor (Anthony Rapp), comes home. Donald launches into a rage and refuses to be talked out of killing Donald, and when pressed why he reveals an awful experience in his youth that directly relates to the situation. The once good-natured Donald becomes increasingly irrational as he exorcises his personal demons by taking them out on Connor. The entire situation only becomes increasingly complicated once the mother, Jennifer (Sharon Maguire), and daughter Mia (Danielle Kotch) come home and enter the madness. The police eventually are clued in on the situation and surround the house, and what began as a simple smash-and-grab robbery becomes a hostage situation with deep moral issues. The movie also follows Police Lieutenant Tarelli (David Zayas), who is in charge of the hostage situation. Tarelli is unsure about how to handle the situation — there are suggestions that he made errors in judgment responding to a recent bank robbery and these errors haunt him — and this adds another wrinkle of tension to the plot.
One of the great details about Junction is that the actors were willing to look like actual meth addicts. I always find it a bit off-putting when A-list Hollywood actors and actresses play drug addicts and do nothing but make their eyes a bit red. The four leads are pale, unkempt, and have dry lips and rotted teeth, and even David’s car is held together by duct tape. Furthermore, the four also act like addicts (there’s a clever moment where the four are arguing in the car and it soon turns into a coughing fit for everyone). It’s refreshing to see a movie about drug users that doesn’t spend the first half focusing on the “fun” aspects of drug use only to spend the last half spiraling downward — there’s no up here: these are the junkies your mother warned you of becoming.
Yet though they’re all desperate addicts, each has a distinct personality, which helps viewers care about these otherwise despicable people. David, who is the ringleader (primarily because he’s the only one with a car, as Spot points out), has the ambition to eventually get clean, especially since it’s clear that Tai wants to recruit him into his operations whether David wants to or not. Spot, the runt of the group, is quick to anger and never fails to escalate the situations they’re confronted with to worse degrees. Kari has the most conscience, and she soon becomes committed to ensuring that the maximum amount of people — both her friends and family — escape the standoff alive.
On the other hand, Donald is an interesting case. He starts out the film as one of those movie stoners — the type that are always a few steps behind everyone but still manage some clever quips between saying “you know, man” — so one weak aspect of the film is that Donald goes from being a barely-intelligent mumbler to crying torturer to committed antagonist rather quickly. I know it isn’t a long movie, but making Donald look really stupid in the beginning of the film didn’t make his eventual anger any more shocking, it just seemed like Bledsoe was portraying two different characters. The character’s extreme change is the only part of the tonal shift that doesn’t go smoothly.
After spending much of my week watching movies by first-time filmmakers, I found it hard to believe that writer/director Tony Glazer was among them. He handles the material and the tension with a maturity beyond rookie ability, resulting in a movie that people who see it will be unable to stop talking about. It’s sometimes difficult for even master directors to pull off effective thrillers, so Glazer is a name definitely worth following in the future.
Rating: A thriller that will not only leave you guessing, but shocked (8/10).
Junction will screen on Saturday, March 2 at 8:30 PM at Loews Village VII (66 3rd Avenue, New York, NY) in competition for the First Time Fest 2013.
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