Butler's Cinema Scene

Nicki Micheaux, Ricardo Adam Zarate

“LOWLIFE”  My rating: B- 

96 minutes | No MPAA rating

Less interesting on a scene-by-scene basis than for its novel narrative arc, the aptly-titled “Lowlife” finds a surprisingly interesting way of telling a sleazy story.

The real star of director Ryan Prows’ feature debut is the screenplay by a small army of scribes (Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, Shaye Ogbonna, Maxwell Michael Towson and Prows) who seem to have taken as their template the time-twisting format of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.”

Basically we have three interlocking stories, told one after another, and all taking place on the same day and featuring the same characters.

It’s sort of like an Alan Ayckbourn play…say, “The Norman Conquests” trilogy, which offered three plays unfolding at the same time in different rooms of the same house.

In the first segment, “Monsters,” we are introduced to Los Angeles lowlife Teddy “Bear” Haynes (Mark Burnham), who beneath his tacky taco restaurant maintains a subterranean chamber of horrors where illegal aliens are dissected for their organs or impressed into sexual slavery.

Teddys’ enforcer is El Monstruo (Ricardo Adam Zarate), who never removes the red luchador mask once worn by his late father, a wrestler who still has superhero status in the Hispanic community.  The current El Monstruo is a bit like the Hulk…he’s light on brain and big on brawn, and when angered goes into a murderous rage, blacking out and awakening amidst corpses and destruction.

But he has a soft spot for his unborn son, the next El Monstruo, who is currently in the belly of Kaylee (Santana Dempsey), his wife and Teddy’s adopted daughter.

The second episode, “Fiends,” is told mostly from the perspective of Crystal (Nicki Micheaux), the operator of a beat-up motel where much of the action takes place. Crystal’s husband Dan (King Orba) is dying of kidney disease; Teddy has convinced her that he can provide a fresh organ donated by the daughter she and Dan gave up for adoption years before, when they were dope fiends.

Mark Burnham

“Thugs” concentrates on Keith (screenwriter Ogbonna), Teddy’s embezzling CPA, and the fresh-out-of-prison Randy (Jon Oswald), a motor-mouthed idiot who while in stir had a huge swastika tattooed across his face.  Teddy wants them to kidnap the pregnant Kaylee…she’s the long-lost daughter of Crystal and Dan, although she doesn’t know her kidney has been promised to the father she’s never seen.

And finally there’s “Criminals,” when all the various plot threads come together in a wham-bam orgy of violence in Teddy’s bunker of horrors.

“Lowlife” feels like something Tarantino might have tinkered with before moving on to something better.  It aims for that Quentin-esque blend of comedy and gruesomeness without ever finding quite the right formula.  Some scenes — specifically in the early going — wander and run out of juice.

But once the viewer figures out the big picture — that this is one big story told in several parts from the different perspectives of different characters — “Lowlife’s” disparate elements start to come into focus, leading to a mildly satisfying conclusion that carries more emotional resonance than  you’d expect.

It’s a case of the whole being more interesting than the individual parts.

| Robert W. Butler