Review: Time To Kill (Short – 2014)

20th August 2015

Time to Kill is a comedy short from writer director Justin Rettke; co-written by Christopher T. Wood & Scott Frank.

Harris (Christopher T. Wood) is a professional hit-man waiting for his next target Shekky (Decon Ledges).

This is a fun exploration of the life of a hit-man and how he spends his time while waiting prior to the kill with hilarious effect. Wood delivers a wonderful balance of dead-pan serious and comical in his performance matched by the writing. I also loved the realistic and gritty production design. The cinematography however is a bit bland only using a few different shots.

3/5 – A hilarious romp through a few hours in the life of a hit-man.

We’ve all seen the films where a character comes into a dark room and finds a killer sitting waiting for him, perhaps in the dark or perhaps switching on a lamp as part of a charismatic reveal. Well, in Time to Kill, we get to see a little bit more around this than normal as we join a hit-man trying to pass the time waiting for his target to return home.

There is a sketch quality to this short film that might have limited it, but it fleshes out beyond this by virtue of what it does. Our hit-man moves from observations of the messy flat around him, into family drama, yoga, therapy, and hopes all of which add to his character while also keeping the chuckles coming. I say chuckles deliberately, because it is a short that is more consistently amusing than it ever is laugh out loud funny. Mostly it seems to stay on that side of the line, and I did wish there could have been some stronger laughs on the way, but it was amusing. I would also have liked the ending to be stronger than it was it was a nice ending, but not a great one.

The film benefits a lot from the performance from Wood. He is alone on the screen for the majority of the time but he carries it well and is pretty funny throughout making more of the material. It is an amusing film, I wish it were stronger and funnier, but it is solid and worth a look for Wood doing good work.

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