New
York is truly a melting pot. You can meet a Russian gangster, a Honduran cartel
courier, and a Francophone prostitute without traveling far from your Chinatown
safe house. Their businesses might be related, but they are all on their own. Nobody
should understand that better than Crowley, a former CIA contractor trying to
safely negotiate his golden parachute. Yet, he will be the one who lets himself
get fatefully involved in someone else’s drama during the course of Dan Eberle’s
Sole Proprietor (trailer here), which screens
during the 2016 Action on Film Festival.
Crowley
thought he would simply cool his heels in the company’s flat until his handler
came through with his new papers, but the agency pulls a Columbo. They want him
to work one last job before turning him loose. Evidently, a Honduran drug
courier died during some hardy partying, but his hosts made it look like a
mugging in order to make off with his briefcase full of cash. That’s the theory
at least. They will get back to him with the details. Being government
bureaucrats, they will work at their own pace, leaving Crowley free to kill
time with the lovely Sophie, who knows how to dominate him just the way he
likes it, for a price.
Despite
his better judgment, Crowley starts to form an attachment to Sophie. He more or
less knows she is playing him when she tries to rile him up against the pimp
sniffing at her doorstep, but Crowley takes the bait anyone. It turns out he is
Misha, the prime suspect in the case of the missing Cartel cash. Unbeknownst to
Crowley, Greer the massively crooked cop is also keeping tabs on Misha, but not
as part of an official investigation. He needs that cash to pay off his
compounding gambling debts.
Eberle
(who studied jazz guitar at North Texas, one of the best jazz programs in the
country) has a very particular noir aesthetic. Viewers can certainly debate
whether it really belongs at AOF, but it works better in this case than in his
previous film, Cut to Black. Eberle’s
films are moody to a fault and Eberle, who usually does quadruple duty as
director, screenwriter, co-producer, and lead actor is a master brooder. He
looks like a credible cowboy-contractor and forges some hot kiss-me-kill-me
chemistry with femme fatale Alexandra Hellquist. Seductive and sophisticated,
she is a real find, who elevates the film with her lethally electric presence.
