Bushwick. A DTV film that breaks free of its roots

DTV - Direct to video.

OK it's now dvd, bluray and streaming but the DTV tag has stuck around.

It's usually the kiss of death for a film. A sign that it's so bad it can't get a cinema release or that the studio has no clue how to market it so shunts it directly to home viewing.

But every now and then one gets released that turns out to be cracking viewing. Bushwick is one such film. A dark, tense, brilliantly made action film.

A young woman (Lucy) and her fella are walking through a subway station in the New York suburb of Bushwick, Brooklyn. They are chatting, laughing, loving life in general until a person runs by them in flames and they realise armed gunmen are running amok on the streets above. She finds herself in a basement and meets up with a man (Stupe) who can take care of himself. Together they will try to escape the madness.

The plot is old hat, stuff we've seen a million times before. It's an action film about an invading force and the people that fight back against it. What makes this unique storywise is that the type of force invading New York. I won't spoil it but it makes for very topical viewing.

The unique selling point of the film is how it's staged. It's all done in one go. Ok, it's done in long continuous swooping takes edited together cleverly but the effect still works. You stay with the leading lady of the film from start to finish. She rarely if ever leaves the frame. It's amazingly well done. It's not a new technique, Hitchcock did it first in the 1940's with the film 'Rope' which was all set in one apartment but this is the first time I've ever seen in it an action movie. It probably has TBH but I've never seen it. Staying with the leads, you see everything as they see it, you find out whats happening when they do. If they are in the dark you are too. It makes the whole thing immersive and fierce realistic even when events onscreen stretch incredulity.

It's a low budget film but because it's kept low key the constraints don't show much. Imaginative use of locations and camerawork make it look like New York is truly under siege. Technically it's pretty astonishing. God only knows how much planning went into each take to make sure people hit their marks at the right time with explosions going on all around them. The final 10 minutes are pretty amazing. A running battle more exciting than anything in films with budgets 20 times the size. Major kudos to directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion for handling it all so well.

Brittany Snow and ex WWE wrestler Dave Bautista are the leads and do a solid job. They carry the action and themselves convincingly. Her, fearful and traumatised at first but slowly gaining confidence and skill and him, haunted and grizzled but well able to handle himself, whether using a gun or his mitts. There's not much emoting involved but the little bits that do happen are handled well. I've never seen Snow in anything before but she does well here. Bautista does a lot better than you'd expect especially in one quiet scene near the end. I like Bautista. He's better at the aul words than Arnie or Van Damme ever were and I hope he does well aside of the Guardians Of The Galaxy films. 

Give this a go. It's well worth a watch.

Its an action film for the Trump era. Dark and fearful and no easy way out.