SLIFF 2010 Review: DANIEL AND ABRAHAM

Review by Stephen Jones

DANIEL AND ABRAHAM  is a surprisingly impressive three-man show. Director Ryan Eslinger co-wrote with stars Gary Lamadore (Abraham) and David Williams (Daniel), and the three of them filled out the rest of the crew positions. Aside from some minor details – some dodgy sound mixing, plus Daniel’s beard looks a little too groomed for being in the woods for over a week – that bugged me just a little, the film mostly worked. The whole time, though, once it got going, there was something that felt off about it that I couldn’t shake.

I was enjoying the movie well enough, there weren’t any parts I disliked, something just wasn’t working. It wasn’t until I thought back on it in order to review it that I was able to put my finger on what the problem was. Each individual scene is quite good. Well acted, pretty scenery, et cetera. The problem is that the scenes – good as they are – don’t quite fit together. There are some scenes of immense tension that are fine in the moment, but the preceding scene didn’t begin to justify it. Everything only really works within the moment, not in the context of the film as a whole.

Some of that may have to do with the film’s short running time. At a trim 74 minutes, they seemed to be rushing toward the conflict between the two men.  If the movie were just a little longer, there may have been more time to build up to the bigger scenes. I understand that with only two characters, the film runs the risk of dragging the longer it gets, but it seems like they were in too much of a hurry to get to the good stuff.

Having said that, DANIEL AND ABRAHAM is never boring, and certainly never outright bad. As I said, the individual scenes are well done; Lamadore does a very good job as Abraham, and the trio make fantastic use of the Catskill mountains as their location. There’s a particularly memorable montage halfway through the film of Daniel trying to fend for himself without Abraham’s help that will definitely register with those of us who are what you’d call “indoorsy.” Overall, DANIEL AND ABRAHAM is definitely worth checking out.

DANIEL AND ABRAHAM will play during the 19th Annual Stella Artois St. Louis International Film Festival on Sunday, November 14th at 1:15 pm at the Tivoli Theatre.