At least the filmmaker seems self-aware. When Gomez tells Loi that he sounds a little agitated over the phone, the man responds, “Well, what do you think? We’re sitting around the campfire, singing songs?” To think of it, actor Hao Do gets all the best lines. “We want full armor. Head to foot. Like Robocop,” he demands on multiple occasions. Most of the time, though, it’s nails-on-chalkboard dialogue. “Never liked them Chinese boys,” Hector spouts. “Fu**ing Panda Express gangsters.” “My lieutenant might have a problem with that choice of protocol,” Advencula states. My favorite line may come towards the end of the film. “You’re not a killer,” Rick Gomez tells one of the kidnappers, “I see that in you. I know it because I see it in me.” Deep.
“…continuity issues…tonal and visual inconsistencies…amateur acting…”
If you can handle the oversaturation of panning shots, the continuity issues, the tonal and visual inconsistencies, and the amateur acting, then you may have some fun with A Clear Shot. There’s a hilarious/ sad sequence of Kappy venturing out in his blue skivvies to make a crucial trade. One of the hostages, Evans (Glenn Plummer), a black man from Mississippi, faces one of the robbers at one point. He wasn’t afraid of the K.K.K. back home, he says, and he isn’t scared now. He gets promptly knocked out. A potentially interesting thread, annihilated.
To that point, none of the hostages register as actual, multi-dimensional human beings. Peebles’s son, Mandela Van Peebles, is one of the purported “leads” of A Clear Shot, although he gets 15 minutes of screen time at best. It’s cute to see the offspring take a – ahem – clear shot at his father’s career. With a few films under his belt already, he may get there. He just needs to make 56 more.
"…at least the filmmaker seems self-aware..."
