By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Jacob Tierney
Starring: Gary Farmer | Joshua Close | Michelle-Barbara Pelletier | Nick Stahl
Country: canada
Year: 2004
Running time: 97
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0339827/combined
Bruce says: “TWIST is a film about the hapless lives of teenage Toronto street hustlers. Like other films of this genre – JOHNS,
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO and SUGAR – the bleakness and danger associated with doing drugs, turning tricks and pleasing the thugs who are in control is startlingly real. TWIST might have had a chance of being a serious film had not the filmmaker Jacob Tierney decided to loosely use Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist as framework for his characters. Doing so serves no purpose
and detracts from the dramatic content.
“TWIST focuses on a group of boys who live in dormitory fashion in a warehouse district in Toronto. By day they sleep and do drugs; at night they do more drugs and hit the streets looking for customers. Joshua Close is the innocent Oliver who is found homeless and is taken under the wing of Dodge (Nick Stahl), the bad boy of the lot. Their pimp is Fagin (Gary Farmer) who ‘manages’ the dormitory and collects the money made from the nightly scores.
“The mob boss from whom Fagin takes orders is Bill (Sikes, naturally). The waitress with a heart of gold at the local 3 Cripples Diner is Nancy (Michelle-Barbara Pelletier); her albatross is her love for Bill. Unlike OLIVER!, this Bill is never seen; he is a menacing presence, nonetheless, whether he is on the other end of Fagin’s phone calls or the subject of conversation among the boys and Nancy. Dickens gets most of the writing credit but I’d personally like to cite the Marvelettes (‘Smokey’ Robinson) and Quentin Tarantino as well. There are silly jokes embedded in the dialogue such as ‘I’m going to tell Bill’ which is uttered with Uma Thurman-like conviction. Fagin’s threat of ‘You’d better not mess with Bill’ had me humming ‘I’m in no position to want competition.’ My mind certainly was wandering.
“Some of the acting is quite believable and the mood of the film often strikes the right notes for its subject matter. TWIST captures the longing the boys have for a better life and the contradiction of their dependency on maintaining the status quo.
“Tierney’s attempts to modernize Oliver Twist don’t work. The boys are too old for starters. This story is darker in spirit than Charles Dickens’ original. Playing around with classic material is a dangerous affair. Updating Shakespeare or famous operas to modern times works well on occasion, but the target is missed more often than it is hit. Hey, let’s do ROMEO AND JULIET set in a nursing home. No one’s tried that. 2.5 cats”