A dog is barking, and a garishly dressed man crouches conspicuously by his gate waiting for him to stop. Oskars Rupenheits’ debut feature follows Imants, a hapless screenwriter on the search for reality. In an effort to compose his latest work, Imants wants to immerse himself in criminal culture, setting off a ludicrous chain of events which dig him deeper and deeper into a hole he must escape from. And it all starts with that dog.

With an underappreciated 80’s dress sense, Imants is perfectly placed into every frame. Surrounded by the Wes Anderson style art direction, he is perennially out of place, lining up brilliantly with actor Lauris Klavins uncomfortable performance. He is the kind of character that everyone is always trying to take advantage of, yet he’s desperately stubborn in trying to get what he wants. The camera smoothly creeps and sneaks as it follows a protagonist doing the same, slowly graduating from small cons to gun theft and murder.

The story is reminiscent of crime capers like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, with a delightful smorgasbord of characters introduced as the film moves through the twisting plot. Imants comes into contact with all sorts of degenerates: from low level crooks looking to exploit him, right up to torturous gang members he gets on the wrong side of. And then there’s the neighbour – like the homicidal paper boy from Better Off Dead, she has a grudge against Imants that she isn’t giving up.

Following Imants is undeniably a pleasure, but writer-director Rupenheits falls short of capitalising on the huge potential of the multi-character, multi-plot format. The film elects to tie things off with comic nihilism that aims for and misses poignance, when a slightly more intelligent solution could have been found. Pulling all of the characters and plots together in a coincidental climax could have elevated a well made film into something really striking, but Rupenheits wastes the opportunity.

Few crime films look as stunning, or are as well designed, as The Foundation of Criminal Excellence, and with a plot certainly closer in quality to RockNRolla than Revolver, Rupenheits has done justice to a difficult subgenre. Ironing out a few kinks and punching up the ending might project Rupenheits’ feature into masterpiece territory, and it certainly bodes well for whatever the director has lined up next. In Imants’ world, criminal behaviour is everywhere, even right outside his front door. But for the truly excellent crime he wants to write about, it is a joy to watch him attempt to search further afield. 

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