As a long-time viewer of the Drinker's film critique and returning reader of his Ryan Drake novels, I expected (at the very least) solid writing. And indeed, I was not disappointed - it is on par with his books. Mr. Jordan and Mr. Grant delivered a consistent story without any obvious holes or inconsistencies, following the rules of writing as shared by the Drinker in his numerous analyses.
The film works very well for both, people who know the books and people who don't. What Mr. Grant calls "easter eggs" are really just details that match the overall story and make the film part of the bigger picture - yet they are neither required for nor distracting from the story at hand.
The casting is so incredibly well done, that I was able to immediately identify every character from the books the moment they showed up on screen before anyone mentioned any names. Andrea Pavlovic (Frost) and Brian Bisson (Dietrich) almost steal the show from Derek Moran (Drake), but a particular highlight was Mike Dopud as the main villain Volkov. Their performances with and off of each other were not only convincing and immersive, but so intruiging that I want to see and learn more about them.
The production value is impressive; locations, both practical and digital special effects, costumes, and props felt authentic and realistic. Nothing looks cheap and often even even exceeds current-day Hollywood productions with budgets magnitudes higher than what Mr. Grant had to work with.
If I had to nitpick, I would point out two scenes that made me ever so slightly frown. When Drake interacts with his team in the aircraft shelter at the beginning of the film, actor Moran seems to overact slightly - he doesn't seem to know what to do with his face, crunching it in all directions. Curiously, this is not an indicator of the actor's abilities as it remains the only such instance while the performance in the remainder of the film is excellent. In the same scene, after Drake left, Frost and Dietrich have another dialogue explicitly calling each other by their names. This feels a bit out of place as both obviously know their own names and nobody else is around to hear that. Similarly, at the end of the film, the head of the FSB while on the phone calls himself the head of the FSB while the person on the other end of the line clearly knows that already. Both instances are clearly for the benefit of the audience in order to identify the characters shown on screen. I understand that this kind of "micro exposition" is very likely unavoidable when dealing with so little time to explore the characters - it is a short film after all. I'm convinced that both Jordan and Grant were well aware of the fact and that a full-length feature would not need to make such compromises.
If the writing, acting, and production of this film is any indicator for the abilities of the people involved, the team deserves nothing less than a bright future in filmmaking and many more productions to come. I would certainly want to see more of the characters and their adventures and I'd be happy for the entire cast to reprise their roles in more short films - or maybe even feature films? One can only hope.
