High Life (2009)

This low-budget crime caper about a quartet of clueless cretins who assemble to rob a bank qualifies as inspired lunacy. Director Gary Yates and scenarist Lee MacDougall have fashioned a funny little flick with good and bad characters. The morality of this piece is such that the robbers are punished for their notorious deeds. However, despite their abject failure to reap the benefits of their ill-gotten gains, the sympathetic ones are redeemed for a largely happy ending. The soundtrack ripples with memorable Top-40 hits, including Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me Not to Come," April Wine's "Say Hello," Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain." Clocking in at a spartan 79 minutes, "High Life" doesn't squander a second and drums up many surprises as well as a refreshing sense of spontaneity. The personalities of these small-time criminals are etched brilliantly, too. Dick (Timothy Olyphant of "Hitman") is a hospital janitor, but he doesn't hang onto this job for long. A former prison cell mate, Bug (Stephen Eric McIntyre of "The Lookout"), visits Dick at work, and Dick gets fired in short order for Bug's shenanigans. Dick's other loser friend Donnie (Joe Anderson) who knows how to steal purses and wallets and withdraw money from the owner's ATM accounts. Dick concocts a scheme where Donnie will pull out $60 and then use other cards to get $54o. Dick recruits a romantic looking French guy Billy (Rossif Sutherland of "Timeline") who will take both the receipt and the cash into the bank and complain to a teller. Dicks hopes that the bank will contact the repair crew, and Bug and he will masquerade as a repairmen and raid the ATMs. Dick's well-laid plans go awry when the pretty teller, Alma (Brittany Scobie of "The Plague"), that Billy sweet-talks, decides not to inform her manager that the ATMs are on the blink. Instead, she takes the cash for herself. Incredulously, our protagonists watch her stroll off to lunch with the $540.No sooner have our heroes witnessed this disaster than an armored truck whips up to the bank. Bug, who is high on cocaine, brandishes an arsenal of firearms. Billy pulls out his gun, too. Dick struggles to convince Bug and Billy from resorting to violence. Bug shoots Billy because these two haven't gotten along well since they met. Bug hijacks the armored truck with Donnie and his relative Lynn (Kelly Wolfman of "Reasonable Doubt") inside and takes it to their other former prison inmate friend, Moondog (Michael Bell of "Goon") who owns a garage. In a frenzy, Bug uses a jackhammer to drill a hole in the top of armored truck and pipe in carbon monoxide. He does this to flush Lynn and Donnie out of the vehicle. Meantime, Dick has helped Billy up off the pavement and put him in a car and they careen off to Moondog's garage. Dick watches as Bug pulls $300-thousand out of the armored truck. While nobody is looking, Lynn slips an exploding paint canister into the bag. Dick and Bug flee the scene to a ranch, but Dick refuses to ride off into the sunset with Bug."High Life" is an impressive comedy of errors. The cast is first-rate, especially Timothy Olyphant and Donald Sutherland's other son Rossif. Stephen Eric McIntyre makes a grim villain with a trigger happy streak in his warped psyche. Yates creates both suspense and comedy and the film never degenerates into a gritty, unsavory saga, as it could easily have done. I'd never heard of it unless I saw it on clearance sale at a Dollar General Discount store.

After I watched this film, I checked out the trailer for it on the DVD. The trailer makes High Life look as though this is some sort of action thriller. What it really is, however, is a low wattage, dark comedy about 4 junkies on various stages of the junkie evolutionary scale that succeeds by never asking for any sympathy or understanding for its characters, only that you be entertained by them.Dick (Timothy Olyphant) is a scruffy morphine addict and ex-con working as a hospital janitor in 1983 when his scruffier, sullen and violent ex-cellmate Bug (Stephen Eric McIntyre) shows up. Bug quickly gets Dick fired but Dick doesn't hold it against him at all, which tells you a lot about both men and their relationship. With no work and no prospects and a horse that shows up in the middle of his rundown apartment, Dick comes up with a plan for a big score. It's so big, he and Bug can't handle it alone, so they've got to recruit Donnie (Joe Anderson), a sickly addict who's developed a scam where he steals people's wallets and uses their ATM cards for easy money before putting the wallets back, and Billy (Rossif Sutherland), another addict with the looks of a high school heartthrob and the good luck to never have gone to jail.Dick's big plan revolves around the repairmen who service ATM machines and it actually seems like a decent criminal idea, until it goes wrong from the very beginning and launches Bug into a shooting spree and leaves Dick covered in pink dye, waiting for the cops to show up.The most interesting thing about High Life is the picture of junkie society it paints. Dick is a high functioning drug user that the others cluster around and unthinkingly look to for leadership. They all consider him smart, but Dick's brain is pretty well fried. All he can do that the others can't is think farther than 5 seconds ahead. A step down from Dick is Billy, who is the sort of addict that's cruised through life without anything all that terrible every happening to him. He's physically and mentally unscarred but his lack of suffering has left him incapable of taking anything seriously, even his own impending death. On the next lowest rung is Donnie, the meek little petty thief who's just going from hit to hit with no thought of the future. At the bottom is the tough but emotionally fragile Bug, who can't even function in normal society, though it's not at all clear whether his drug use has anything to do with that. The way these four men fit together in an informal social hierarchy is kind of fascinating, all the more so when drastic changes in fortune make all of Bug's weaknesses into strengths and turn all of Dick's advantages into drawbacks.This is also a consistently amusing movie. It may not be laugh out loud funny but it you can't smile at stuff like Bug asking Dick about mutual friends, only to be told they're all dead and that Bug killed one of them, maybe you need to get high on something. Timothy Olyphant is delightful as a guy who used to be smart and now rummages through the drug-addled remains of his brain for inspiration. Stephen Eric McIntyre also does a very good job showing how Bug's temper and lack of forethought go from flaws to advantages based on the situation.High Life is a nice little piece of work. It draws humor and a bit of humanity out of the harshness of life, without getting too full of itself or expecting its audience to care more than they should. This is worth watching.

Caught this on Showtime, and it struck me as a real gem flying low under the radar. Though obviously not big budget, it held my interest and really worked. Excellent script, acting, etc. (For some reason it reminded me of Dustin Hoffman's "Straight Time".) While Showtime has far more than its share of truly awful gay vampire flesh eating low budget considerable violations of the film genre pieces of crapola, sometimes, "even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then." Consider this little jewel a humble acorn undeserved by Showtime.This flick really works. I've done some time on the street, and have seen the interaction of morons with reality. One is left pondering that classic bit of wisdom, "The best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray..."But, even if you are a loser, you have to play out your hand. What the arty fartsy French existentialists would term, "La condition humaine."

yeah. yeah. yeah. for me, it's the best dope shooter movie since drug store cowboy. but spun was really good too. but anyway, drugstore cowboy made me want to shoot dope, but this flick made me want to flush it all down the toilet. it is a big bummer. no glamor at all.high life, shows that dope draws many types of people together in common junky endeavors--primarily getting high, but also in doing time.these guys don't just share the junky drive, they also share the junky attention span. they're like two year olds--the world flying by them doesn't exist past six hours and the need for the next bump.and timothy olyphant, man he's good. i'd watch a half hour infomercial if he was in it. and hopefully he'll just keep getting better--that is if he isn't pulled off course by some home-made junky fix, or he just gets burned out on all that Hollywood crud.i really liked this, it's a good flick. the characters are well developed, but that's kinda easy--you probably know all these guys already; except i hope there's no bug in your life. cause' if there is, chances are you're living this movie and not watching it.