I Die Alone: Featuring perhaps the highest budget of any of Fredianelli's films, I Die Alone has at least 2 or 3 really great set pieces, some really good ideas, and a really long second act. Beginning with a larger skirmish and finally ending in an abandoned base (that somewhat resembles a Concord, CA housing project), the piece's bookends get the blood going suitably, with some really nice work on sound and some very bloody squibs. The pacing and tone get switched around a bit as we get situated in the narrative, centering around Carl Schreiber's whiny soldier archetype. We get a lot of soldier clichés as we spend the first few minutes in a set-bound bunker, with a burned-up Michael Nose in the background of the sequence. We then get a mixture of voice-over (I was rolling my eyes at it a bit in the beginning, but it pays off with accumulation if the viewer's patient enough) and dialogue sequences (the discussion of Korean prostitutes is suitably sleazy and fits the DTV feel of the set, so far so good). You get a sense that the movie's going to end up involving Nose's character and Schreiber either dueling with each other or having some kind of extended conflict, but it's going to be another half-hour until we finally get settled into the movie's primary rhythm, which involves Schreiber wandering around, falling into traps, and dealing with a homicidal mail carrier (actor Marc Litman seemed difficult enough to work with in the included "Blooper" reel, but otherwise has a fine screen presence and charisma). Early on, the mixture of grit and cliché (a shot of a woman back home getting the son's KIA letter in particular seemed familiar from, well, every war movie?) worked out an interesting mix between the classical films being made during the film's setting and the trajectories we've come to expect from films like Saving Private Ryan or Eastwood's WWII combo. All in all, where we end up for most of the movie is in a rough mishmash of varying tones, the narrative's plotting not nearly as dense (or random) as something like The Dry Blade but too dry and without tonality, for the most part (there are some really nice shots of the guys walking through what look like wheat fields). What that creates is a really difficult plodding middle hour or so, where we get occasional blasts of action amidst tedium and character ticks. One wonders if the lack of mood in these moments comes as a result of the actors or the writing (given my lack of affection for Schreiber's screen presence, I'd guess the former, although he manages some really nice moments in the 3rd act). We finally get going again in the base-bound final act, and the film regains a sense of urgency, rushing headlong through a well-executed shootout and into a mystical plot twist that really paid off some of the earlier work done with the voice-over. One gets the feeling that with more rounding out of that second act around the tone or mood that the ending suggests that we might have had something quite special on our hands, but so much of the middle of the movie seems to be checking off plot points that the entire project's merits are undersold a bit in execution. Ultimately, interesting failures can be more gratifying than complete successes, and if you're willing to endure its lesser elements, I Die Alone has a helluva lot to like.
