Indie crime dramas are, perhaps, the hardest thing to do. Since we're all familiar with police procedurals from TV and we've all seen buddy cop movies, it's very hard to keep things real within a small budget. Well, in Clash of the Criminals, writer/director David Moore has taken what he can and done the absolute best with it...and it's pretty darn good.

Clash of the Criminals is a pretty straight forward story, local drug dealer, Clint Steel, needs a new bodyguard. It seems that the old bodyguard got caught dealing drugs and was sent to prison, so Clint has decided to find the five toughest guys in the country and have them compete to be his guy. The problem comes when one of the five chosen talks back to Clint and Clint decides to have him killed. When the hit goes bad, all five of the criminals band together to make sure that Clint doesn't do this to anyone else.

Now, Moore is clearly working with a very low budget and his friends, which can lead to all sorts of trouble, but he manages to keep this short film from being too 'low budget' looking by the great use of music. Where most low budget directors aren't sure how to make a scene move, Moore uses some great tracks from Bond and other movies to add a depth to Clash of the Criminals that usually isn't there in a low budget crime story. I'm giving Clash of the Criminals three out of four cigars, it's not perfect, but it's worth a look. You can check Clash of the Criminals out for yourself by heading over to the DMPictures You Tube page.