'All Mistakes Buried' Is A Thrilling, Drugged-Out Noir

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 21, 2016 7:02PM

Sam Trammell in "All Mistakes Buried." (Photo: © Breaking Glass Pictures.)

Filmed in a palette tinted yellow-green, All Mistakes Buried looks as sickly as its protagonist, a man struggling with addiction, mental instability, and his own rash decisions. The noir drama follows him as, still mourning his broken marriage, he journeys into Louisiana's criminal underworld.

Sam Trammell (HBO's True Blood, The Fault in Our Stars) plays Sonny, who is nearing rock bottom as the movie opens. Disheveled and manic, he's most concerned with getting high and doing it fast. Through a fractured narrative of flashbacks that mirrors his mental state—or a truly terrible hangover—we find out that Sonny was once a prosperous co-owner of a security business with a marriage on the rocks.

Sonny steals back a necklace he pawned in an effort to reunite with his wife. Thanks to a reckless call to an escort service, though, he loses that necklace, and instead finds himself plunged in a netherworld of prostitution and crime, where the fierce Franki (Vanessa Ferlito) puts his security know-how to work in an armed robbery with unintended consequences.

Director and co-writer Tim McCann does a nice job of subverting expectations. At first, the movie seems like a rough, character-driven portrait of an addict, but quickly its pulp and noir elements take over. The fiction of Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me) and other pulp favorites also clearly influenced the movie's depictions of the underworld. However, just as you think you have the new, nasty vibe down, the story takes a more sensitive detour.

Trammell, who shares a story credit for the film, is excellent in a role that requires him to be on edge in almost every scene, while still showing some of the flashy charisma Sonny had before his downfall. Ferlito, probably best known for her roles in TV's 24 and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (half of the Grindhouse double-feature) makes a terrific, tough-as-nails villainess, while Missy Yager brings a lot of emotion to her limited screen time as Sonny's wife.

Filmed on location in Alexandria, Louisiana, All Mistakes Buried captures the region's atmosphere, focusing mostly on impoverished communities. McCann's been making independent features since 1995, and this left me eager to catch up with his previous films and see where he goes next.

All Mistakes Buried extends last year's healthy run of strong, low-budget American independent films that, frankly, are flying too far under the radar. Kudos to Facets for giving it a theatrical run, but distributor Breaking Glass Pictures obviously expects to find its audience through the simultaneous video-on-demand release. Yet the VOD market is becoming so immense, this gem could easily be overlooked. Here's hoping it isn't.

All Mistakes Buried. Directed by Tim McCann. Screenplay by McCann and Shaun S. Sanghani, from a story by McCann, Sanghani and Sam Trammell. Starring Trammell, Vanessa Ferlito and Missy Yager. No MPAA rating. 84 mins.

Opens Friday, Jan. 22 at Facets Cinémathèque. Also available through iTunes, Amazon and other video-on-demand services.