This 2008 low-level debut from stuntman Nash Edgerton deserves a little more attention....

The Square, the feature debut of industry stuntman Nash Edgerton, is the most wonderful kind of unoriginal movie. Mining similar territory in structure and influence as the Coen Brothers (The Man Who Wasn’t There in particular), while tonally and stylistically hewing closer to Christopher Nolan, Edgerton delivers an immensely satisfying, totally engrossing modern noir yarn.

Ray Yale (David Roberts) is given the ultimate noir set-up – you can run away with your super-hot mistress, Carla (Claire van der Boom), but to do so you’re going to have to take some arguably immoral, and certainly illegal, actions. What are the consequences of those actions? Hey, settle down, we’re not there yet. For now, you have an easy way out, and you’re only hurting people who probably have it coming. Anyway, it’s not like anyone will find out it was you. Want to take that chance?

To say much more would be to spoil the fun – and I use the word “fun” only for people who, like me (and I don’t think this is ruining anything for anyone familiar with noir), get a huge kick out of watching things get worse and worse and worse for someone. It’s an extremely clever script, but not in a way that feels terribly contrived, except to set all possible forces against Ray. Fate, circumstance, and the occasional bout of luck are the driving forces, so when Ray has a chance to set things right, he’ll need only to slightly nudge something in the wrong direction for it to go flying off the cliff (Edgerton’s excellent short film Spider, which is showing in front of the film nationwide, covers a lot of similar thematic terrain and is a great lead-in).

"I’m not one to say all movies need to work on all levels, but hey…this one does"

This leaves us with two possible readings, both very intriguing – the most immediately evident one is that the world is a cruel place, and that in spite of your best efforts, nature and circumstances completely outside of yourself will take over. This is the more likely, especially because it’s something that the Coen brothers deal in a lot (more prominently over their last few films). But the more intriguing idea is that there is a moral order to the world. Every action he takes to escape retribution inevitably worsens his situation, and so the reason Ray cannot fix everything is that he is doing battle with a natural, morally just, world order.

Last Coen comparison – much like the films of the brothers Coen, The Square can be read several ways, or no way at all – on the surface, it’s still immensely entertaining. I’m not one to say all movies need to work on all levels, but hey…this one does. It’s a crackerjack of a script – everything pays off in some way, and the characters are very sharp – with dynamic performances. Is it something we’ve seen before? Sure, but that’s also the case with almost every other movie being made. The key with this kind of film is keeping us guessing, continually surprising, and leaving us more than a little beaten down at the end. Man, how I love a good crime movie.

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