The job

In the southern euro countries it is currently becoming clear how quickly the meshes of the welfare state network enlarge in times of crisis and how an enormous number of people are actually directly affected. Even a permanent job is no longer a guarantee for a peaceful life against the backdrop of the mass deaths of companies. And many self-employed, temporary workers and top-ups end up directly in the shark tank of the crisis economy. Such topics are often too sensitive for mainstream cinema - in films that are produced more cheaply and with which there is no such great financial risk, directors can, however, definitely afford to use unpleasant, realistic scenarios as a stage for thrills or fuss. One of them is Shem Bitterman, who in his tragicomic thriller farce "The Job", which was completed in 2009, tells of a syndicate that has contract killings done by freelancers with no prospects for the future.  GoStream What on paper looks wonderfully black-humored and socially critical turns out to be quickly as a thematically fuzzy, aimless and insecurely narrated genre mixture.



Without money, job or perspective, Bubba (Patrick Flueger) in his late twenties hangs out in the bars of Baltimore, chats with other unemployed people or jokes with the waitress Joy (Taryn Manning) - until the strange drifter Jim (Ron Perlman) comes along and Bubba involved in a conversation. He would never stay in one place for more than three days; could Bubba recommend a place to stay? In return, Jim forwards his patron to a job agency of a different kind and thus to the mysterious Perriman (Joe Pantoliano). When Bubba is put in the picture about the true nature of the new job, however, he becomes very different: he is supposed to kill a man for a princely payment. First he knocks out. Then the prospect of a better life leads him against his better judgment to accept the assignment. But that's only where the madness begins ...

The story of the phlegmatic average guy who seeks an escape route from a dreary life with an uncertain future in the criminal swamp is a classic subject of noir literature, which has been varied from Jim Thompson to Patricia Highsmith. Screenwriter and director Shem Bitterman borrowed the milieu of urban hopelessness from Thompson ("The Killer Inside Me", "The Getaway"). The medium-sized city of Baltimore looks less like the crime metropolis it is portrayed as in the series "The Wire", but more like one of those deserted US desert towns of yesteryear. Highsmith elements can also be found in "The Job" especially in Jim, who looks like a distant relative of the "American friend" Tom Ripley and who plays the supposedly harmless intermediary for the demonic Perriman.



Instead of a straightforward thriller in the neo-noir style of "Red Rock West", Bitterman apparently preferred to shoot a weird farce in the style of the Coen brothers ("Burn after Reading"). And in fact, with the introduction of the characters and the establishment of the conflicts, he sets a similarly brisk pace as his famous colleagues. In this case, however, it turns out to be too fast, because there is no time for emotional highlights and the fine-tuning of the staging also falls by the wayside: decisive moments of action are hardly staged differently than purely functional transitional scenes. The humor also remains strangely non-specific. Again and again you have to wonder how the often particularly weird lines of dialogue are really meant, because in view of the weak timing, many a punch line goes nowhere.



What is important is what can be seen on the screen. And not even Ron Perlman ("Hellboy", "Drive") can score, his Jim is written far too one-dimensional for that. Leading actor Patrick Flueger ("Footloose", "4400 - The Returners") has significantly more space to fill his silty antihero with life and he uses it. With the waitress Joy, a failed actress with her heart in the right place, there is even a romance that is never embarrassing or tasteless until the end. It is less easy for Joe Pantoliano ("On the Run", "Memento") as a shrill, weird murder mediator who often seems like a foreign body in unfocused events. Shem Bitterman constantly changes the narrative tone, he hardly ever finds a harmonious balance between weighty drama and ambiguous lightness.



Conclusion: Shem Bitterman's "The Job" has an exciting initial situation, from which far too little is teased out in the course of an incoherently narrated and aimlessly played plot.