Which of These Brothers Will ‘Take the Night’? (Movie Review)
Take the Night
Rating: 7/10
Director: Seth McTigue
Writer: Seth McTigue
Style: Action Thriller
Time: 82 minutes
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuxKCr6_izI
Review by Mike Szymanski
A dispute between brothers over their late father’s import empire ends up in a potential Cain and Abel combat. The set-up of this intense sibling rivalry results in this intriguing crime thriller ends up in a film noir-ish story with plenty of twists and wrong intentions.
Robert Chang is the younger, smarter and socially-inept brother who has a great business sense, but no friends.
William Chang is an older jealous and fun-loving brother who seems well-meaning but often gets mixed up with the wrong crowd. William plans to give his brother a surprise for Robert’s 25th birthday. He plans to stage a kidnapping, and then have everyone yell “surprise.” But, he has to bribe the staff of the company to stay late after work to reluctantly attend the party.
The sibling rivalry reveals some dark family secrets.
Robert is always cleaning up the messes of his older brother William, and says, “Dad didn’t trust you.”
The elaborate faux kidnapping that results in a surprise birthday party ends up going rogue. William hired a motley crew to conduct the kidnapping, but they have a plan of their own to get a bit more cash than they were originally going to get.
Seth McTigue fully utilizes his knowledge of New York City where he grew up and is the writer, director, producer and star of this impressive first feature film. McTigue plays Chad, who is the head of the kidnapping ring that is hired by older brother William (played by Roy Huang). McTigue not only seems to do everything else in the film, but stands out as a fine gritty actor as well by portraying this character who is a war vet with PTSD. He also has a crazy and unpredictable brother Todd (played by Brennan Keel Cook).
Cook portrays an irritating little brother with a ridiculously creepy giggle and an immaturity that makes you dislike him immediately.
Sam Li is perfect as the uptight and do-gooder brother who gets jumped by masked men in this company’s parking garage. That’s his brother’s idea of a joke, but it isn’t very funny.
In between it all, watching from the wings, is the wise secretary of the brothers, Melissa (played cleverly by Grace Serrano). As long as she has worked for them, they only now find out that she has a son with a disease who is in Mexico and she can’t afford to bring him to the country.
“You’ll work it out,” is all the empathy that Robert can offer.
The kidnapping team also consists of a mute longtime neighborhood friend (played by Antonio Aaron) and a former pro-basketball prospect who is down on his luck (portrayed by Shomari Love). They see this kidnapping as something that will change their individual futures in this high-stakes heist.
It’s obvious that McTigue has a passion for filmmaking. He uses creative visuals and creates an interesting vision. For example, near the beginning, he shoots the view of the Emergency Room from the point of view of the audience riding on the guernsey. Prepare for the upcoming ride, he seems to be saying with that shot.
This is an impressive idea for a first feature film that gave birth when director Seth McTigue was brainstorming over some short film ideas.
“My first thought was what if I create a plot where someone is kidnapped for a surprise birthday party,” McTigue says. “I loved it immediately, and the consensus was that this was something that could appeal to many.”
That idea became his first short film and that ended up turning into a longer feature film script, and that turned into this first feature film. After that, the movie was honored at film festivals and won the Audience Award at the Phoenix Film Festival, Best Director at the Golden Door International Film Festival and Best Action Thriller at the Manhattan Film Festival.
The movie was released on July for two weeks in New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit. It has been available on Video On Demand since July 12.
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Brennan Keel Cook (left) plays the irritating brother to McTigue’s character
