By Last Caress.

Keeping Justice, the new movie written, directed, produced and edited by RJ Cusyk (Through the Devil’s Eyes, A Final Hit) does not begin especially encouragingly. After witnessing a woman being mugged and murdered immediately outside the window of the Commercial Equity building in which he’s employed, Michael Pierson (Hayden Mackey) takes to his desk and enters into a conversation with Kevin (Michael Lakota Dillon), a work colleague who bowls into Michael’s office, sits down and puts his feet up on the desk. The dialogue plays out as follows:

-“Hey Mike! How ya doin’?”
-“I’m fine. How are you?”
-“Good, man. Just got done banging the secretary, that’s all.”
-“What do you mean, ‘just’? As in, right now?”
-“Yyyyup. And you know what? If she gives the boss half as much head as she does to me, she’ll be moving up the ladder. Dude, she has the tightest box I’ve ever f*cked, and I’ve seen a lot of tight boxes. I even f*cked a virgin.”
-“Kevin, would you kindly shut the f*ck up?”
-“Jeez, what the hell’s your problem?”
-“Nothing. I just don’t want to hear about how you just f*cked the new secretary.”
-“Dude, admit it: You’re just mad because you didn’t f*ck her first.”
-“No, that has nothing to do with it.”
-“Dude, you’re just jealous you didn’t… you didn’t tap that first. That’s it.”
-(sarcastically) “Yep. You got me. I’m super-jealous that I wasn’t able to f*ck her first, and make her my sex-slave.”
-“Dude, I know you well.”
-“You read me like a book! Like that time you read The Dark Tower series. How’s that Gunslinger workin’ out for ya? Or The Man in Black? Was it Johnny Cash like you thought all along?”
-“F*ck you.”

Now this was a static-camera exchange and I couldn’t tell if the actors were playing the dialogue for laughs or were trying to replicate everyday office conversation but, either way, I almost switched it off there and then, and we’re barely two minutes into the picture. Didn’t Michael just witness a robbery and homicide mere yards away outside his window moments prior to this inane back-and-forth with the odious Kevin? Well yes he did (“Ah, that’s a shame,” remarks another co-worker as she joins Michael looking back out of the window at the dead woman on the lawn), and he finally calls it in, but upon being questioned by the police (“What can you tell us about what happened?” “There’s not much to tell.” “Then why did you call us?”) it transpires that, had Michael not been sidetracked by Kevin’s carnal office f*ckwittery and called in the mugging immediately, the victim might have lived. Still, at least Michael called it in, yeah? That’s better than, as he put it to the officers, “the countless people who walked over her body just to go about their day-to-day lives.” Okay then.

This apathy toward the increasingly violent and crime-ridden world in which we live is at the heart of Michael’s trajectory and represents the main thrust of Keeping Justice, as his dreams of becoming more than an inured bystander bleed out into the world and manifest as actual vigilantism. Unfortunately for us, the script doesn’t improve even as the fundamental plot basics do. I hate being negatively critical about independent filmmakers but I cannot in all good conscience recommend Keeping Justice, but I’ll try to pick out some positives anyway: First off, anybody involving themselves as utterly in the process of making a movie as Keeping Justice‘s auteur RJ Cusyk deserves all the respect in the world for his industry, and I want to encourage him to keep plugging away at it. Secondly, lead Hayden Mackey has an inherent likeability and his performance grows as Keeping Justice progresses. Thirdly, some of Michael’s vigilante daydreams are presented in clay stop-motion animation, which is actually quite amusing. And finally, well, the shaky-as-hell character motivations and matching dialogue are often so hilariously bad (sorry, guys!) that in truth I possibly could recommend Keeping Justice as a good “bad” movie, should any of you out there be so inclined towards availing yourselves of such pictures.

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