Let's get this out of the way first: Cheech features what is possibly the most Canadian murder ever committed to film, when a man is beaten to death, in a snowbank, with one of those metal dealies that you put under your tires to get traction when you're stuck in the snow. I wanted to stand up and sing the national anthem when that happened.
Cheech is a darkly humorous and stylish noir, set in the world of the Montreal escort service industry. But it's really the story of a small business man trying to compete against the big boys, to make good and carve out a slice for himself and those loyal to him.
In classic noir style, the film opens with an image of the hero, dead in a hotel room, gun in hand, his blood mixing with the snow blowing in from a broken window. The movie then goes back in time, and we learn how we got to this point, the way shifting loyalties tragic misunderstandings, and bad decisions made for noble reasons led to this result.
Cheech keeps the pace taut to the final framem giving us interesting and complex characters with complicated motivations.
Side note: usually subtitles are pretty much transparent to me, after watching a movie, I remember the characters doing and saying things, not reading. But in Cheech, for the first time in a French-Canadian film, a I got a real sense of what it's like to see English as an invading and alien force. Something that's both sneered at and feared, an agent for ambivalent change.
Sunday, September 10 8:30 PM PARAMOUNT 4
A modern film with all the elements of a classic noir, only Canadian.
Instead of constantly raining, it's constantly snowing.
Instead of everyone having a big gun in their pocket, everyone has one in a locked box in the locked drawer of their desk back at the office.
Anyway, there are a couple good little mysteries in the movie, but they're not really the highlights, they're all there so that the film fits solidly in the noir genre. There's a murder, and it's kind of the main mystery, but it's not really the main point of the movie.
So all the important elements are there, and they're all acted upon, but the movie is really about the people in it. It's about the pimp and his problems, both personal and business. It's about the pimps aide and how his personal life overflows and effects everything else. It's about the girls and their clients, and what's driving each of them.
Overall, a great movie filled with a number of good elements. Well crafted and well executed. Another solid example of good Canadian cinema! If, at the end, you are not struck down by the incredible and terrible irony of it all, I would say that there is probably something wrong with you. 8 )