Starting out with what seems to be a fairly standard stakeout, Richard Anthony Dunford (P.O.V.) film Dragonflies Only Live For 24 Hours very quickly goes off down a much different and darker path. It wasn’t what I was expecting going in and I was quite pleasantly surprised with what I got.
Frankie Mills (Karl Kennedy-Williams) and Parker Lyle (Judson Vaughan Cold Blood, The Spiritualist) are on a stakeout of a potential drug deal. The film cuts between the present and flashbacks showing how they got to this point. And how they made their rapid rise up the forces ranks, often by less than ethical methods.
I really don’t want to say too much more about the plot and spoil it for anyone else. Suffice it to say that this is a dark and grim tale of two cops who will let nothing get in the way of their ambitions. And the effects that
For a “self-funded no-budget DIY independent crime drama” Dragonflies Only Live For 24 Hours has an incredibly polished look and feel to it. It was obviously made by people who believed in the film they were making. Dunford’s script is enjoyably intricate with plenty of twists you don’t see coming. But it never gets so convoluted that you get lost either. It helps that unlike a lot of low budget films the exposition isn’t all dumped on us via dialogue. The flashbacks do an excellent job of filling us in on the backstory. Not that the film’s dialogue is bad, it’s actually quite good, but two guys sitting in a car talking gets old fast.
The cast deliver as a whole, for many of them it’s their fist role of any substance and this should serve as a good calling card for them. A film like Dragonflies Only Live For 24 Hours needs solid performances to sell it, and it has plenty of them.
Currently doing the festival circuit, Dragonflies Only Live For 24 Hours has already picked up several awards. You can keep updated on future showings via Twitter and Facebook.