Falling in love is hard enough without someone pointing a gun at you, but that’s somehow the perfect formula in David St. Clair’s The Lonely Crowd. Two strangers on a bad first date find themselves with bigger problems than whether to order dessert.
At a Los Angeles prison, an inmate breaks out and climbs into a waiting getaway car. He has a gun and a plan. Oh, and his driver is a cop. Meanwhile, across the city, everyday man Peter (Adam Wesley) is trying to salvage what’s left of his social life. A former professional baseball player with more strikeouts in love than wins, Peter shows up to what he thinks is a party at his friend Matt’s (Blair Chambers) place, only to walk straight into an engagement celebration, with his ex and her new boyfriend already there to rub it in. Buddy Matt, feeling charitable, grabs Peter’s phone and fires off a message to a woman on his dating app. Her name is Ashley (Taylor Anne Danehower), and she fires right back.
Their first date is less a romantic spark and more a negotiation. Ashley shows up late, Peter is annoyed, and the two of them spend most of their time sizing each other up. Each comes with their own agenda — what he wants, what she’s protecting herself from, and whether either of them is actually being straight with the other. Always the gentleman, Peter stops the date, asks for a moment to pause, and starts over. Then Ashley recognizes someone at the bar and walks out without a word. Peter follows her into the parking lot, where he finds her face-to-face with the man from the bar, who demands to know where his money is. Peter steps in. It doesn’t go well for him.
That’s when Phil (Jon Oshei) shows up with a gun. In a matter of minutes, Peter and Ashley go from a bad first date to being driven at gunpoint to their destination, wherever the money is supposed to be. The only reason Peter is alive is that only Ashley knows where the money is. Phil locks them inside a storage unit and disappears. Peter wants answers. Ashley’s response says everything — you don’t want to know.
“…Peter and Ashley go from a bad first date to being driven at gunpoint to their destination, wherever the money is supposed to be.”
The Lonely Crowd is a weird little combination of two genres that don’t always work together — the romance and the action thriller. Writer/director David St. Clair pulls it off by keeping both in play without letting either one strangle the other. To be honest, the romance end takes a bit of a hit, but not enough to sink anything. St. Clair manages to do just enough to keep the romance and danger moving, and that’s not easy.
The film opens in mundane territory, focusing on romance. Peter is grinding through single life in Los Angeles and on the edge of giving up. He meets Ashley through a dating app, and the movie shifts into a different gear entirely as a spicy meet-cute becomes a deadly game of intrigue and double crosses. What works is that these two should not be together. Peter wants a normal relationship, while Ashley is incapable of providing one. But once they’re thrown into an intensely stressful situation together, those differences create the perfect imperfect love connection. Ashley is running from something in her past, and as you know, you can never run from your past until you confront it head-on.
On the other hand, Peter is not built for what he’s about to walk into, but he walks into it anyway, and he’s got to find a backbone and fast. Can Peter, with no skills except baseball, become the hero who saves the damsel in distress? What sells it is the cast. Every character is written with a specific purpose, and the actors are cast perfectly. It’s a great showcase for emerging LA actors who get to stretch their acting muscles. Nobody is phoning it in, and in a movie that lives or dies on whether you believe these people, that matters.
Juggling two genres in a single film ain’t easy, and St. Clair shows he can keep at least two balls in the air at one time. The Lonely Crowd belongs to its cast of emerging Los Angeles talent eager to prove they’re ready to level up.
For screening information, visit the The Lonely Crowd official website.
"…Ashley's response says everything — you don't want to know."
