Sonic Cinema

Grade : C+ Year : 2019 Director : Zahir Omar Running Time : 1hr 40min Genre : Crime, Drama

**Seen as part of the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival.**

Zahir Omar’s “Fly By Night” has the pieces in place to be a really fun, light crime thriller about two people who go out on their own, behind their family’s backs, and dig a deeper hole when they take on a mark who has her own agenda. That should be an entertaining movie, but this one doesn’t commit to the right tone. It picks up energy by the end, but by that point, I was already kind of bored with it.

The film revolves around a family that runs a taxi business, whom also have an extortion racket they use the taxi business as a cover for. They have done well for themselves, and brothers (Tailo, played by Sunny Pang, and Sailo (Fabian Loo)) have been smart about how they’ve done things. A recent release from prison, Ah Soon (Eric Chen), is brought into the racket- he is Tailo and Sailo’s godson. Sailo wants to be making more money than they have per job, and he has a willing partner in best friend, Gwailo (Jack Tan). Their first target, however, is Reanne (Joyce Harn), a jilted lover whom has just been dumped by the married man she’s been having an affair with. They take from her, but she points them to the husband, whose wife runs a major diamond ring company, and can get them thousands upon thousands. Two things go wrong, however: first, the taxi company is being investigated by the police, and a hard-ass inspector named Kamal (Bront Palarae) as this job gets started; and secondly, Sailo and Gwailo get in deep with local gang boss, Jared (Frederick Lee), whom isn’t above extortion of their own.

This is basically similar to a lot of heist movies in the cast of characters, and the story beats feel very similar to “Gone in 60 Seconds,” and there is plenty of material, and some good performances, here to make this fun. But even for a 100-minute film, the pacing feels lethargic, and despite good performances, the characters are not terribly interesting, even if the story is. “Fly By Night” just feels like it’s coasting on a hook, but when it tries to get a bit silly when Ah Soon and Gwailo go out on their own, the shift to something a bit funnier just doesn’t work. This is a disappointment.