Acquired by Amazon Studios and streaming now on Amazon Prime is the film, Blow The Man Down (2019). Beginning with a stirring rendition of the title sea shanty by several fisherman on the docks (who function as a type of Greek Chorus throughout the film), it’s a stylish way of announcing its setting – a fishing town in Maine called Easter Cover. The plot focuses on two sisters – Priscilla Connelly (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth Connelly (Morgan Saylor) – whose mother has just passed away, and the sisters are left with debt that could take away their house. Priscilla wants to stay and run the family fishing shop while Mary Beth wants to take off to college. They are comforted by a trio of older woman who were friends with their mother played by June Squibb, Annette O’Toole and Marceline Hugot.
When Mary Beth hits the bars to drown her sorrows, she winds up with a mysterious stranger Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who has some serious red flags (gun in the glove compartment, blood in the trunk). When things get tense, Mary Beth defends herself and we wind up with a dead body. This leads to the sisters getting into way over their heads into criminal matters, bringing to mind Fargo. There’s also a bag of money, an incriminating weapon, and a town madame who runs a brothel that the police turn a blind eye to, Enid Nora Devlin (played to a hilt by the great Margo Martindale).
Clocking in at a tight 90 minutes, this is a fine thriller that has an off-kilter tone that doesn’t go too overboard in its dark humour and creates an interesting, unique atmosphere. Lowe and Saylor are very good as the sisters, but they almost become upstaged by the rivalry between the town madame and the unlikely trio of older women who allude to a hidden protectorate authority. Directed and written by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, Blow The Man Down upends the often masculine noir drives of these type of dark crime movies. I thought Blow The Man Down was quite good; it’s an engaging watch, and offers something a little bit different in a familiar crime genre.
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