Will “The Critical Drinker” Jordan has brought his Ryan Drake novel universe back to indie films with his second movie, Trial By Fire. His first film, which I’ve looked at before, wasn’t perfect. There were some flaws, but points for a critic trying to be part of the solution. It beats that time Roger Ebert gave it a shot, but it was amateur work…which given he’s adapting his own works for the first time with a low budget I kind of expect. It’s grading on a curve, but we have to start somewhere.
This film is also set in the Ryan Drake universe, but focuses on Keira Frost, a new recruit to The Agency, who is assigned to Drake’s team. We also see her history, what brought her to this point. I’ll do a review with spoilers afterwards, but given the last movie was also a Saturday Night Showcase, it seemed right to do this one, too.
So, did Jordan learn anything from the previous movie? Did the director, Travis Grant, bring us a better movie than last time at least? Check out the film, and then my review. Enjoy?
I’m confused by some of the comments on the video. Outside of taking the punishment to potentially save her allies (plus they were going at least somewhat easy on her given what’s really going on), how is she a “girlboss”? Look at all the female action leads who weren’t girlbosses, but if made today all the actual girlboss feminists would have given us a negative view right out the gate. They’ve ruined female action leads. Now everytime one simply exists the screams of “girlboss” come out. She needs to be tough, and while we don’t see her training and the only hint we get is that her dad did security (that’s more than we ever got from Rei Palpatine, which isn’t saying much), we at least see what formed her attitude. Whether it’s interesting or not is up to you (I wasn’t riveted, either), but it’s actually there. If she was a girlboss she would have kicked all their butts and walked out like a champ with no injuries. Had this been a real situation, she’d be dead.
The point of Drake’s test was to see if she was tough enough to handle the mission and not betray the team. She didn’t do it for them or The Agency. She did it in the hopes that the team would get someone on hunting them down. I’m not comfortable watching the torture, and if I didn’t use his reviews so often on this site I might not have touched this thing. I find it interesting to see someone who reviews storytelling try to do their own, as I’m trying to do that as well. It’s allegedly why I started these reviews and commentaries, to make myself a better storyteller. It does improve from the last film, even if this isn’t ready for the big leagues. Everyone starts somewhere. Jordan started with the novels, which I haven’t read because it’s not my genre…especially after reading the Op-Center novels I bought when I might have been more receptive to some of it than I am today (though I would have had many of the same complaints I’ve had in my Chapter By Chapter reviews). Maybe all of that leads to me being less harsh to it than some in the comments, and we weren’t warned of this one coming like the previous ones (putting it on his main channel seemed to confuse the audience who only comes for his comedic reviews, commentaries, and backstage trivia), which might have put others off.
Is this some great film? No, but it’s also his second low-budget film based on a novel series I haven’t read to comment on. I’m not expecting the greatest action movie ever. It’s still very dark, I don’t enjoy watching a woman whose whole life was being treated like dirt, even if it does form who she is, or torture scenes worse than a Batman story. At the very least it’s an improvement over the last film. We’re not being asked to care about characters and backstory we aren’t aware of, like we did with Rogue Elements. The biggest critique in my mind from memory was that film kept dropping in characters I felt like I was supposed to know from the novels, but didn’t. This time I didn’t feel like I missed some important information. Since we’re focused on the new girl and her history, it’s a step up. We’re seeing her being tested for the worst job of her life, the only thing the last movie got across. They had to be able to trust her in the field and that she could handle being part of this given her past history. She passed and it was made clear she was going to be trusted as a proper member of the team. She actually earned it, unlike the usual girlboss. She also wasn’t some Mary Sue better than the boys. Like I said, if this was a real situation, she’d be dead in the river rather than drinking at a bar when the credits rolled.
I’m not expecting a magnum opus. I’m expecting signs of improvement and potential to further improve. I’ll give him point for that at least. I’ve seen and heard of worse from more allegedly experienced creators making more money and with more of a budget. It’s not an “ace job”, but it shows some promise. Hopefully if they make a third one we’ll see that, but only time will tell.
