Under the Dark Wing (Short)
It’s always exciting when a filmmaker begins to subvert your expectations of the sort of movie you think you’re going to get for them. That’s part of what has made Steven Soderbergh’s career so fascinating; from the very beginning, you knew that not only were you in the hands of a genuine talent, but also one not content to give you the same film over and over again.
One filmmaker who is becoming that way for me is Christopher DiNunzio. He’s one of the directors I’ve come to appreciate most through his requests for me to watch his work. The first one was a feature documentary, “Viva! Saint Agrippina,” while the last three have been shorts. The first one, “Her Heart Still Beats,” was very much of a thematic piece with that documentary, while the next one, “Nihilism,” threw me for a loop from a narrative standpoint. His latest film, “Under the Dark Wing,” takes things even further than that.
The film begins with a hitman going to his employer to discuss what happened on a job; the mark was killed, but he allowed a young woman to escape unharmed. His reasoning doesn’t sit well with his employer, who thinks he’s probably back to his drug-taking ways– that’s how absurd his reasoning is. But his boss is in for a surprise, and the hitman is in for a tragic demise.
Spirituality, whether it’s faith, or lack thereof, always seems to play a part in DiNunzio’s films, and “Under the Dark Wing” is no exception, although it certainly doesn’t call attention to itself the way it did in his previous films. “Dark Wing” is much more of a narrative crime thriller, where the story is more the focus than an underlying theme. In that respect, I would put it slightly below his previous films, although not too far below, because really, this is just another example of the director nudging his audience in a different direction, not really content hitting the same notes every time. I can live with that.
