Lazarus Rising
“Lazarus Rising” starts off quickly, as we see a hit man and his partner take out targets at a boxing match. The voice of the main character, Mike Fitzpatrick (Mike Pfaff), starts setting the stage, and telling his story. Actually, that’s not entirely true: Mike’s story begins as we see him bloodied and bruised, and he tells us about how his father said to him that where we end up in life is determined by the choices we make. After seeing moments that we will see happen in the next four days of Mike’s life, then we see him in that gym, as he and his partner (Angie, played by Megan Le) make a well-coordinated mess of things. We then go through the people in Mike’s life, from different contract killers to the middle man who feeds him work (Sal Rendino) to his brother (Sean, played by Sean Carmichael) to Emma (Devon Ogden), his girlfriend, who will play a key role in his life over the next week.
John Depew’s crime thriller reminded me, in narrative, of something like “The Killer” or “A Better Tomorrow”– basically, an action-laced thriller about honor among thieves from John Woo’s ’80s Hong Kong era of films. It’s definitely got a deep cast of characters that merits the comparison, and whether or not it was intended, Mike does feel like a Chow Yun-Fat sort of hero. You also have a rogues gallery of killers that Mike will have to contend with, including a seemingly indestructible one in Gray (Adoni Maropis), which is very much in the Woo vein. That said, “Lazarus Rising” doesn’t work quite as well as those films do. From a storytelling perspective, Depew and his writer, Rufus Chaffee, do a fine job streamlining the narrative for a smooth, clean 91 minute film that cuts all the fat out of the story. Unfortunately, while it makes for a breezy moviewatching experience, which Depew also makes visually and musically interesting to watch with his cinematographer and composer, it also feels more mechanic and “by-the-numbers” than a story that is intended to illicit any feelings in the viewer. The thrills are there, and everybody hits the necessary marks, but I just didn’t feel anything for these characters on an emotional level. That’s not always important for an entertaining movie, but it does help elevate a movie to being something a viewer wants to watch again, to experience again. A previous film of Chaffee’s I watched, “The Muse,” is a great example of that, but it’s a very different type of movie. That film was something more personal than just a genre exercise like “Lazarus Rising.” There’s nothing wrong with genre exercises, and believe me, you can do a lot worse than “Lazarus Rising”– this isn’t a lazy or an obvious film by any means, just one that didn’t really engage me in all the ways a better film might have.
