THE SHIPMENT (2018)

THE SHIPMENT (2018)

Tagline: Honest living isn’t always clean.

(Drama, Sci-Fi, Morality) [Short]

Note – No MPAA rating was given for this film. 

In this one, a man named Kaidan Katar is just trying to give his daughter the best life he can. He is an ex-slave trader who has tried to set his life right. After an incident with his ship, he is unable to afford repairs and decides to take one last shipment to make ends meet. Is it worth it? 

First off, it kind of feels like we might never see Ishana Bala as an actress again. I can only assume that she and director Bobby Bala are related. In this, she plays Zohra who is Kaidan’s daughter in the movie and does a pretty decent job. However, it doesn’t look like she’s taken another role since 2018. Aleks Paunovic who plays Kaidan though, and this dude is in a ton of stuff. He might be most famous right now for being Ivan in the HAWKEYE Disney + series. He kind of helps this film breathe a bit, but that isn’t a knock on anyone else in the film. I think my favorite character though was actually the mechanic played by Adrian Petriw. He only had a few lines but was the most light-hearted character in a movie kind of filled with “downer” themes. There is also a Robert Maillet who has been in a ton of movies also but might be best known for being the big Russian dude from PACIFIC RIM. 

Unlike some short films, we do actually get a complete story here, but the first 10 minutes of character building I felt could have been cut in half to give us more time on the ship, maybe given us a few more scenes to care about this father-daughter bond, or even a more well-rounded ending. Effects wise this feels very CGI heavy which for sci-fi can be fine, but there is something off about the lighting or something in a lot of these scenes. The strongest scene though feels like it would have been where Kaidan’s cargo ship is taking off and it’s raining, but that shot actually looked fantastic. 

As a director, I think Bobby Bala did a lot with a little and actually gave us a pretty solid 30-minute outing. There are a few scenes in here that I could have done without. To kind of highlight the fact that Kaidan has some personal demons, he literally keeps little aliens in bottles that bite him and gives him some sort of drugged effect before dying. Kind of like bees, only I am guessing this is like some sort of space drug. Anyway, it wasn’t necessary to the film and really brought nothing but an idea to the table that could have been replaced by other imagery that would have worked better. Just writing this review a few ideas popped into my head that I would rather have seen.  This is being kind of nitpicky though because that scene does come into play later in the film. 

Overall I wish this movie wasn’t as much of a downer, but I thought the messiness of the situation probably echoes a lot of hard choices for parents that are struggling to keep themselves together after loss. As kind of a “you can’t always get what you want” type film, this thing serves a purpose, but I personally don’t have a desire to watch it again.

For me, this is a 4 out of 7 overall. Good to great acting, just wish the story would have put more effort in places it didn’t. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF DUST/BOBBY BALA* AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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