After burning out in the city, Will Shipe is summoned back home where he uncovers dark truths about his family and the town he grew up in.
When Will Shipe (Scott Friend) returns to his hometown after working in the city, he discovers the hidden secrets that threaten his family’s reputation in the community. His childhood friend, Nick Taylor (Alex Breaux), has been digging all over town in search of gold. The townspeople say he’s changed for the worst ever since he became obsessed with finding it. He doesn’t know exactly where to dig but his visions guide him. At the behest of his mother and his own personal concerns for him, Will tries to talk to Nick out of digging. After finding him, Will learns that he is beyond negotiating. Nick’s determinism is strengthened by the fact that the gold isn’t just a money grab but a chance to reveal the town’s dark history. With people growing more suspicious and nervous that Nick will find the gold Will must find a way to protect his friend and his family.
“Union Bridge” somehow balances the line between being too long and too short at the same time. It’s long in the sense that the entire film feels like one big camera test. The camera lingers on characters and locations to a cringeworthy length. The attempt to extend silence in order to enhance the intensity of a scene is poorly executed as well. Many scenes will end with the camera idly recording the actors beyond their lines or the setting after the characters exit screen. Throughout the film are these types of shot choices that don’t enhance or relay any relevant information. These stylistic choices make the pacing of the film distractingly slow. It is also to the detriment of this movie that the characters are quite hollow and cookie cutter. Characters like Will, Nick, and Mary (Emma Duncan), are shells of stereotypical characters, Will being the golden boy returning home plays the hero. Everything goes right for him and he doesn’t seem to have any kind of arc. The Will we meet is the same Will we are left with. Nick, is the McGuffin, basically set up to introduce the search for the gold. Mary, despite her secrets, winds up only being Will’s love interest. There are missing pieces of information that are key to explaining certain plot points and character motivations that never seem to reveal themselves.
The supernatural portions of the story create even more confusion. Flashbacks meant to explain the importance of the gold and the people involved don’t really explain much. Instead, the flashbacks take you out of the film and in effect makes what happens in them feel random and insignificant. (Spoiler alert ahead) The virus-like quality of the visions Nick has apparently transfer from person to person until they reach Will. Although with Will the visions give him much more information than they did their predecessors. It’s unclear whether or not the flashbacks and visions are one and the same but it’s something not readily clear in the telling of this story.
In the end, the movie is simply interminable. Perhaps had it been a more developed idea and not overextended itself it could have worked better. There is a willingness to accept certain stories in films but there has to be connections made between ideas. Especially when those ideas inform upon each other. There are so many ideas in this film, small and big, that either never come to light or fall short of a decent explanation. “Union Bridge” feels like a rough cut that could have been trimmed down significantly. It really feels like key information is withheld from you making it hard to connect the dots in the mixture of history and thriller.
“Union Bridge” will open in L.A. May 15th and on DVD & VOD May 19th
