Sweet Cyanide

by

Jonathan Nolan

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Sweet Cyanide

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SWEET CYANIDE
Direct release from PISCES ALL MEDIA
Director: Jonathan Nolan
Cast: Valentino Costa, Karen Hurley, T Paul Stiles

SWEET CYANIDE is a mixed bag for me.

A comedy murder mystery, it revels in its campiness and cliche and the leads are both cute and memorable giving star turns at every moment. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag, with T Paul Stiles as Shorty a standout and newcomer Mick Shanahan having his druthers in a couple of tense scenes.

On the one hand it tries extremely hard to master its material- using every trick in the book from pans, tracks and jump cuts to old school dialogue and set pieces.

The violence is all implied, which makes a refreshing change from in your face splatter. That has its place, but not in a film like this.

Apparently there are another 14 films on the drawing board for the next decade, and while this is not a stellar first effort it shows some promise for the future.

Canberra Australia finally has a feature film industry to call its own.

However, the film has to succeed or fail on its own merits. It falls flat at times due to editing, but some of the cuts are actually quite brilliant. I find it hard to give it high marks; impossible to give it a failing grade.

6/10

--Peter Summerfield, OCT