Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.
Directed by Bill and Turner Ross.
Featuring Michael Martin, Shay Walker, Lowell Landes, Felix Cardona, Bruce Hadnot and Rikki Redd. VOD and in cinemas, theoretically. 98 mins.
Among their many failings, Americans can't run a proper pub. They're either too formal with compulsory tipping and payment by tab, or they are dark, scummy dive bars; desperate places for desperate people. The Roaring 20's in Las Vegas is definitely one of the latter and this observational documentary captures its last day as a business in 2016.
The one constant is Michael Martin, a former actor who claims to be 58 but looks 70. He starts the film being woken at the bar as the sun comes up and almost a day later he delivers its last line. Various other characters fill up the place: a veteran who feels let down by his country; a Petrocelli lookalike in a cheap suit who is spoiling for a fight; a placid Aussie giant who has a mysterious bag stored behind the bar. At the start it looks like barman Marc Paradis with his ZZ Top beard and casual Seth Rogen air will be the star, but his shift ends in the afternoon and he exits the film less than halfway through.
Ultimately though it isn't the barflies and the lushes that fascinate you: it's the others. The ones that look like they have other places they could be. A young, attractive blond lady sits at the bar nursing various fruit-based concoctions and isn't seen talking to anyone. What does she get out of it? What's her story?
So, overall, this is an engaging study of bar life, if less romantic and poetic than all those Bukowski books had led me to expect. But, never trust a documentarian, and that goes doubly so for the fly-on-the-wall documentarian, a charlatan crew is ever there was one. All the way through the film little questions kept bugging me: why didn't they specify where the bar was in relation to the Vegas strip or why it was closing; who was keeping track of the various bar tabs and how had they gotten consent to film in a bar. And then the moment the film is finished I go online to do a bit of research and find out the whole thing is fake! Most of these barroom buddies meeting up for the last time were cast by the directors, carefully selected from a range of watering holes and filmed over two nights in a bar in New Orleans. And it wasn't even about to close!
The directors' justification for it is that distinction between fiction and documentary is inherently fake, which is true enough. So, perhaps you should treat this as an extended piece of improv. Or a Barfly Big Brother. But in that case, shouldn't it be a bit more interesting? Nobody even gets a bloody nose.
Directed by Bill and Turner Ross.
Featuring Michael Martin, Shay Walker, Lowell Landes, Felix Cardona, Bruce Hadnot and Rikki Redd. VOD and in cinemas, theoretically. 98 mins.
Among their many failings, Americans can't run a proper pub. They're either too formal with compulsory tipping and payment by tab, or they are dark, scummy dive bars; desperate places for desperate people. The Roaring 20's in Las Vegas is definitely one of the latter and this observational documentary captures its last day as a business in 2016.
The one constant is Michael Martin, a former actor who claims to be 58 but looks 70. He starts the film being woken at the bar as the sun comes up and almost a day later he delivers its last line. Various other characters fill up the place: a veteran who feels let down by his country; a Petrocelli lookalike in a cheap suit who is spoiling for a fight; a placid Aussie giant who has a mysterious bag stored behind the bar. At the start it looks like barman Marc Paradis with his ZZ Top beard and casual Seth Rogen air will be the star, but his shift ends in the afternoon and he exits the film less than halfway through.
Ultimately though it isn't the barflies and the lushes that fascinate you: it's the others. The ones that look like they have other places they could be. A young, attractive blond lady sits at the bar nursing various fruit-based concoctions and isn't seen talking to anyone. What does she get out of it? What's her story?
So, overall, this is an engaging study of bar life, if less romantic and poetic than all those Bukowski books had led me to expect. But, never trust a documentarian, and that goes doubly so for the fly-on-the-wall documentarian, a charlatan crew is ever there was one. All the way through the film little questions kept bugging me: why didn't they specify where the bar was in relation to the Vegas strip or why it was closing; who was keeping track of the various bar tabs and how had they gotten consent to film in a bar. And then the moment the film is finished I go online to do a bit of research and find out the whole thing is fake! Most of these barroom buddies meeting up for the last time were cast by the directors, carefully selected from a range of watering holes and filmed over two nights in a bar in New Orleans. And it wasn't even about to close!
The directors' justification for it is that distinction between fiction and documentary is inherently fake, which is true enough. So, perhaps you should treat this as an extended piece of improv. Or a Barfly Big Brother. But in that case, shouldn't it be a bit more interesting? Nobody even gets a bloody nose.
