Short of the Week

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Action Gil Freston

The Big Break

When two friends meet up for lunch in Hollywood, their obsession with fame and a series of violent mishaps sets them on the run from the police.

Play
Action Gil Freston

The Big Break

When two friends meet up for lunch in Hollywood, their obsession with fame and a series of violent mishaps sets them on the run from the police.

The Big Break

Directed By Gil Freston
Made In USA

Although the odds are against them, every year a flood of hopefuls make the move to tinseltown in order to chase big Hollywood dreams. With some talent and a ton of luck, they too can be the next big thing. Or….in reality…they’ll be a never-was, serving overpriced coffee to other never-beens while pretending they all have something “going.” Welcome to LA…

The Big Break is a big budget action send up of this feeling of hopelessness, of fighting against a vapid industry—a sort of Falling Down for the Hollywood hopeful. It’s a self-aware pastiche of industry clichés married with broad action beats and satisfying one-liners.  Cathartic and hilarious. It’s also an accomplished bit of filmmaking—polished and well-shot, with high production action sequences and a plethora of “name” talent. Sneakily, writer/director Gil Freston gets to make fun of the industry, while also making a polished pitch for getting work in it.

Obviously, Freston is writing from experience. As he relates to Short of the Week:

“As a collection of us were stuck in the purgatory/paradise of Hollywood, we wished to create a satire of life in LA and the state of the modern-day entertainment industry. In doing this we found a deeper commentary on millennial culture, American life, and ego in general. We wanted the whole thing to be tongue-in-cheek, making fun of people who take themselves very seriously.”

Freston and his team get the tone just right—The Big Break is a love letter to movies (mainly 90s action/buddy cop films), yet it’s skewering them and how they are made. It’s also never boring. That may seem like faint praise, but it’s a relatively long film in the world of short comedic satire, so it’s impressive how Freston captures a viewer’s attention throughout. As soon as I felt like things were losing steam, the film would throw out a perfectly timed joke or high-production value action sequence to keep me hooked. This all culminates with what is probably the funniest moment in the film, a perfect button of a joke as a cop (Jude B. Lanston) watches his partner (David Arquette!) grab the dying protagonist’s hand: “They were in the same acting class.”

The struggle is real folks…fake it until you make it.

Freston is about to enter pre-production on his feature film, Edge of Fear.