Michael
Fassbender is fully clothed, while Liam Cunningham is really drunk. Together, they are a mismatched pair of
crooks hired to pull off a very dark caper in John Maclean’s Pitch Black Heist (trailer here), the winner of
the 2012 BAFTA Award for best short film, which screens today as part of the Status Update programming block at the
2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Known
simply as Michael and Liam, two safecrackers are meeting each other for the
first time on a very unusual job. They
are two retrieve some item (it hardly matters what) from a safe with a
light-sensitive alarm. To prepare, they
practice navigating a dummied-up room in complete darkness. On the day in question, they meet in a quiet
pub and wait for their employer to send them the all-clear. However, they find themselves cooling their
heels far longer than they expected, so they start doing what you’re supposed
to do in a pub, lest they attract attention.
Pitch has a nice
little twist at the end that Maclean adroitly lays the ground work for, without
glaringly telegraphing it. Frankly, this
concept could be relatively easily expanded into a feature, which makes the
economy of Maclean’s thirteen minute storytelling all the more noteworthy. Still, the real entertainment is watching the
boozy interaction between co-executive producers Fassbender and Cunningham. Both actors have genuinely intense screen
presences, perfectly suited to their roles in Pitch.