The Convict (Short)
In “The Convict,” Mark Battle tells a simple, straightforward story. We follow a convicted felon named David Eller (Dean Temple) after he has escaped from prison. The first thing we see is of him breaking a window to get into a house. He was shot in his escape attempt, and he needs to try and fix himself up, as well as get into some regular clothes. We do not know what crime he has committed, but when the family comes home, and he has to hide, David seems perfectly willing to kill, if he needs to. He doesn’t need to before getting out of the house, but he may have to by the time he gets to his destination, where his ill wife is.
As I said before, this is a straightforward story, as we get David from Point A to Point B, and it has a very literary feel in the way it conveys emotions with minimal dialogue. Battle’s directorial process is simply to let the story unfold, and he does that was tension that keeps us guessing how certain situations may play out while being able to see how others are almost destined to play out. As cinema, it reminds me of something like Clint Eastwood’s “A Perfect World,” except the law isn’t quite as close to capturing Eller as they were Kevin Costner’s character in that film. But the point of the comparison was how they feel like-minded as morality plays, as sparse narratives that still unfold with a scope that is focused on what matters rather than what is expected. Twenty minutes is more than enough for “The Convict,” even when his goal in his escape (seeing his wife again) feels all-too-brief.
