Snowflake, 2017.
Directed by Adolfo J. Kolmerer and William James.
Starring Reza Brojerdi, Erkan Acar, Xenia Assenza, David Masterson, Alexander Schubert, Adrian Topol, Gedeon Burkhard, Eskindir Tesfay, Selem Tadese, Martin Goeres, and Judith Hoersch.
SYNOPSIS:
Hunting down the murderer of their families in an anarchic Berlin of the near future, the outlaws Tan and Javid find themselves trapped in the wicked fairytale of a mysterious screenplay that entangles them in a vicious circle of revenge – apparently all written by a clueless dentist.
Snowflake rolls a Tarantino-esque crime story (the kind where characters jabber about fast food over their victims’ corpses) in with a self-reflexive plot in which gangsters Javid and Tan (Reza Brojerdi and Erkan Acar) find a screenplay for the movie itself. They proceed to track down and torture the writer of the script, a dentist named Arend (Alexander Schubert), in order to find out what’s going on – Snowflake’s screenplay itself was penned by Arend Remmers. All this unfolds against a fantastical backdrop, a world in which angels sing at nightclubs and people claiming to be God and Jesus Christ walk around mowing people down with semi-automatics. Additionally, an electrically charged superhero exacts vigilante justice on a Berlin that’s slipped into chaos. By the time the animated credits kicked in, I felt as if I’d just watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, by way of The Boondock Saints, set in the world of Bright, with some of James Gunn’s Super slipped in. If that sounds like a mixed bag of references, it’s because Snowflake is a mixed, if consistently entertaining, experience.
The film rises on its cleverness and the chemistry between the actors. The two central story strands are led by actor duos who bounce off one another well. Javid and Tan display a fun, buddy-criminal relationship built on constant quipping and argument. At the same time, Eliana (Xenia Assenza) partners with disgraced bodyguard Carson (David Masterson) to avenge the murder of her parents. Eliana and Carson have a lived-in, mentor/mentee rapport, which keeps them grounded even as they tangle with cannibal serial killers and gimp-bots.
While the meta-textual nature of Remmers writing himself into the movie made me balk, he succeeds in toggling between stories and genres fast enough to keep the film speeding along on a bloody, funny, twisty keel. Remmers also deserves credit for effectively interlocking the characters’ backstories, which are uniformly wrapped up in revenge. The story starts out fractured and assembles itself as it progresses. However, the superhero portion always feels shoehorned in, especially when Remmers stitches in a too convenient backstory during the final stretch. To Remmers’ credit, Snowflake closes out on a splashy, bold, weird note that dares the viewer to hate it.
Cinematographer Konstantin Freyer photographs the sequences with dynamic angles and compositions that lend the movie a comic book aesthetic. Directors Adolfo J. Kolmerer and William James manage to draw solid performances out of the actors, even as the scenes and settings grow increasingly untethered.
Snowflake straddles the fence between pulp and pretension. At times the movie comes off as a virtuoso genre exercise. At other times it’s an energetic, but rough, effort fueled by the works of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino with tinges of the comic series Fables. Despite the patchiness, Snowflake is a darkly funny, compulsively entertaining mash-up flick that fans of idiosyncratic crime films and urban fantasy will appreciate.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Sam Kitagawa
