6ix Crabs (2008) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: 6ix Crabs (2008) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Saturday, January 03, 2009 @ 21:18:36 Mountain Standard Time by Duane

J.R.K. is is a bounty hunter. His cousin Smokey is supposed to be helping him out by guarding a guy he got to turn state's witness. Unfortunately, that guy ends up dead in a moronic turn of events anod now Smokey has to answer to his cousin for the screw up.

6ix Crabs is a short film by J. Armando Moncayo. While it's stylish and quirky, it does suffer from one major problem. It's confusing, and it needed a whole lot more substance to fill in the blanks and fill out the characters.

On a story level, this film would have been better served by being a feature length film rather than a short. There was a lot more that could have been put into this story to really fill it out and develop the characters. While watching the film, I found myself having a hard time following the story because of the lack of a coherent lead in. It basically just starts out with two hooker type girls talking about one of the characters and what was going on. For me at least, I didn't want to hear them talking about a character I had no clue about. I wanted to see some lead in. That would have established both the story and the characters better and led to a more coherent and enjoyable film.

Then there's the part about the six crabs. It's a story with a moral, the substance of which isn't actually ever stated even though the telling of it takes up a large chunk of the end of the film. It's a story about six crabs. They're in a tank in a restaurant and don't want to be eaten, so they come up with a plan to escape by climing out of the tank using the barnacles. The first two crabs pair up and escape. The second two do the same. The third pair do nothing but try to fight over who's getting out first and try to keep each other from reaching the top. They fail to escape and are eaten. Though it's not actually stated and the movie leaves you to figure it out for yourself, the moral seems to be that if you work together with people you'll be ok, but if you fight over who's going to get ahead, then you'll just end up a big loser in the end. Personally, I don't really see how this applies to the story we're presented with.

While the film has some story and development problems, there were also some things that were done very well. There are some really great camera shots that are edited together in such a way as to give the film a rather surreal effect.

The acting on the part of most of the characters was quite good. I just wish the length had been there to give them time to develop fully. I think the only real problems I had with any of the actual characters were with the Vanilla Ice wannabe and the state's witness guy. They were both incredibly annoying and seemed out of place with the rest of the film. I think both characters could have benefitted from a re-write.

The long and the short of it is this. This is a film with a lot of potential to be turned into a much longer film. The talent to take it to the next level is there and I can clearly see it in the visual quality of this product. It just needs some work and some development to turn it into something great. As it stands now, it's just ok with a nice visual style and bits of coolness sprinkled throughout.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, you can check out the film's MySpace page at http://myspace.com/pistolapictures.