Cinequest Cinejoy Reviews: “Drive All Night” and “A Hard Problem”
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
Writer/director Peter Hsieh wears his Nicolas Winding Refn and David Lynch influences on his cinematic sleeve with the neo noir film Drive All Night, but his debut feature at the helm offers plenty of originality, appealing characters, an interesting atmosphere, and some unexpected destinations.
Taxi driver Dave (Yutaka Takeuchi) picks up fare Cara (Lexy Hammonds) at her motel. Though she is mysterious about her reasons for wanting him to randomly drive anywhere, she is on the talkative side, and takes him on a journey that includes a dialogue about retro video games at a bar, a visit to a nightclub where the singer Midnight Judy (Natalia Berger) is reputed to be a vampire, and a stop at an establishment where she confronts Dave and a waitress (Sarah Dumont as Morgan) that he is interested in about their relationship. A video game addicted hitman named Lenny (Johnny Gilligan) and his garbled-voiced higher-up (Von Scott Bair) add an extra element of danger to the proceedings.
Beautifully shot by William Hellmuth, featuring Robert Daniel Thomas’ terrific synthesizer score, and pulsing with colorful set design, Drive All Night works in a dreamlike haze where reality and surreality blend for both Dave and the viewer. The film is often deliberately vague, but this drive takes you on an enigmatic journey to a satisfying conclusion that is different than most films in the subgenre offer.
Written and directed by the duo known as hazart, A Hard Problem is cerebral science fiction that explores the oft-used genre trope of an artificial being becoming aware of its own consciousness and explores the existential and other philosophical ramifications thereof. The difference between this film and many others in the science fiction genre is that A Hard Problem stays focused on its musings without any action sequences.
There’s a lot of discussion here and the dialogue is wonderfully written — if occasionally drifting toward the stiff side — and beautifully performed by its two leads, John Berchtold as Ian, whose mother has recently passed away and who is now confronting his own lifespan, and IT specialist Olivia (Catherine Haena Kim). The two have strong chemistry together. There’s not a lot of high emotion between the two — that is left to other characters — but nevertheless they begin to form a bond, and it is engaging to see where it is headed.
Fans of heady science fiction, thought-provoking drama, and solid acting should find plenty to enjoy with A Hard Problem. It’s an engrossing meditation on mortality that offers plenty about which to think after the ending credits roll.
Drive All Night and A Hard Problem screen as part of Cinequest Cinejoy, which runs online from March 20–30, 2021.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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