This was a screener submission from Nathan Shepka of Shepka Productions. We'd seen his work before with When Darkness Falls, which I really enjoyed, plus he and screenwriter Tom Jolliffe were guests on the pod earlier this year to discuss their newest project, The Baby in the Basket. In addition to us, our friends Mike, Rich, and Steve at the DTV Digest have covered this as well, in episode 241 of their podcast.
Lock & Load has Shepka and Colin MacDougall as Nick and Derek, two high-end private security guys who think they're going to have a relaxing bank holiday, but instead are called into action when their friend, Agent Stokes, goes missing. As they dig deeper into what happened, they uncover an arms deal between a mysterious figure named the Chess Master, and an arms dealer named Steiger. They also run into a lot of trouble as baddies come out of nowhere and try to take them down assault weapons and explosive devices. Will our heroes find their friend and stop this arms deal from happening?
This was a lot of fun. There were legitimate laugh out loud moments, some of which I thought about after the fact and still laughed at. The thing is though, while it's a send-up of action films, the humor is obvious, but it's not over the top. With the limit resources they had, they made nice looking fight scenes and action sequences, which for me made the comedy even better. It was a bit long for me, it comes in at about 105 minutes, and I could've done with 15-20 minutes shaved off, but this was entertaining enough overall that that mitigated it. The plot may have been a bit convoluted, but I think even that was supposed to be part of the fun--at least I took it that way and went with it. As a fellow action fan, I love something like this that I can have fun with the cliches, but also puts a lot of work into the action as well. It couldn't have been easy on a tight budget, but I think they pulled it off.
Nathan Shepka was writer and director for this as well as acting as one of the leads, but I don't think there's much in common between this and his previous directorial effort, When Darkness Falls. The latter was a slow-burn thriller, without a lot of humor in it, while this jumps right in with a hip hop song about Atlanta, a goofy conversation about pigeons fat shaming, and then a shoot out. Because they're so different, I don't know that I can say I like one better than the other--When Darkness Falls is a cleaner film because it has fewer moving parts, and it's not required to take the chances visually that this one does, but the things this does on a limited budget--and does well on a limited budget--can't be overlooked. And again, the jokes landed, which is probably the most important. I'm excited to see what he and Tom Jolliffe do with The Baby in the Basket.
In America, comedy tends to be more over the top, and I think when that kind of comedy is married with action, what that does is, one, make the filmmaker think they're insulated from criticism--"I'm going to make the action sequences so goofy that if they look lazy, I can say 'that's what it's supposed to look like, it's goofy!' " and then two, when I'm watching it, even as an American with my American sensibilities, I feel like I'm getting hit over the head with it. The problem is, to pull it off they way Shepka and everyone else working on this project did, the action scenes need to look good enough, which I think is why most filmmakers doing a send-up of action go over the top. Sure, the action sequences weren't Hong Kong stuff, but they still looked pretty solid. I was waiting for the fight between Colin MacDougall and Laura MacDougall (not sure if they're related) and Shepka and David McCallum, and they didn't disappoint when we finally got them--and didn't disappoint because they were good cinematic fights, but we also had those touches of humor as well.
Earlier this year I did a series on my solo DTVC Extra podcast looking at the Fast and Furious franchise, and I think maybe a movie like this shows us where big budget action has lost its way. Sure, with $375 million you can make the best looking action sequences, but what good is it if it's running over the same, safe material. It's the same thing with the Marvel movies. This is doing something different with the genre, and while I'm sure Shepka and co. would like a little more money than they had, they didn't need $375 million to make something fun and entertaining. And the point could be made that my doing that series on the Fast and Furious movies was me losing my way, because a movie like Lock & Load, or Lady Terror, which I did on my last indie screener post, are more where I enjoy watching movies, and a big reason why I started the site.
Finally, like Lady Terror, Lock & Load takes place in a part of the world where people drive on the right-hand side of their car. This was shot in Glasgow, which was slightly disappointing, because I thought it would've been funny if it took place in Aberdeen with the movie starting with the song "Do it in the A,"--which writing the title sounds worse, it's supposed to mean "how we do it in Atlanta." Anyway, as an American, the steering wheel on the right hurts my sensibilities, but the amount of shooting in this makes total sense, though as Will told us when he was on to discuss Craig Fairbrass and Rise of the Footsolider 3, shootings and killings by firearms in the UK are pretty rare, which is why the Range Rover killings where Pat Tate was murdered are so compelling to UK audiences. I think that's part of the joke here, that Glasgow--unfortunately not Aberdeen--looks like LA in a PM Entertainment flick with all the shootings and explosions, but it's a joke I don't think I would've gotten if I didn't have that info from Will ahead of time.
And with that, let's wrap this up. This currently isn't available in the US, but hopefully will be soon. For our UK readers, you can check it out on digital platforms. This is the rare mix of a comedic action film that does a great job on both the comedy and the action. Thank you again to Nathan for sending this along, it was a fun time! And as an aside, I didn't plan this out, but Monday is a holiday here in the States, Labor Day.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13552530
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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