Review of Treed Murray (2001) by Bill C — 25 Aug 2008

Sometimes Canadian movies are so fickle. I mean, we just take what they give us in stride really. Occasionally we'll get clever fun romps like "Meatballs" or "Porky's", fun campy flicks like "Ginger Snaps", amazing documentation like "Wrestling With Shadows", sophisticated humor and satire like "Highway 61" or "Hard Core Logo", or a sign of the times biopic like "The Rocket", or some methodical thought provoking, and downright eerie films from David Kronenberg.

Yet we still get the overrated pretentious Indy fests, from Atom Egoyan, which seem to be trying hard to be an Indy movie getting an oscar, moreso than it should just be a DAMN movie!!

Enter Treed Murray. I'm guessing the budget was mainly paid for the permit to use the park, and maybe David Hewlett's suit. Some found this move to be pretentious. I found out to be the most intriguing hard to turn away movie I've seen in quite some time at that point.

Hewlett plays Murray, just your run of the mill ad executive, who his stalked in the park by a gang of hoodlums who want his wallet. Murray however looks down at them, and even hits one of them, so they chase him up a tree, and utter threats that if he comes down, they'll kill him. He tries to shout for help, but the gang members cleverly thwart that.

And now we have our movie. And what else can I say? Hewlett spends the movie, trying to get out of this situation anyway he can. Picking apart the gang members one by one and there personalities. And while Murray is no saint himself, we feel as if this gang is merely doing this, because they have nothing else they want to do, and the message it sends to me, is that, gangs need to get there man, in order to boust about there credibility.

The gang leader is named Shark, played marvellously by Cle Bennett, and his lackies include a drug addicted woman, an overcompensating psycho, a follower, and a troubled kid who's family situation has grown worse.

The characters are all intriguing, and Hewlett is nothing short of awesome here, and this is the movie that "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" tried to be.

See, Murray may not be the greatest guy in the world, and we see he can be outright arrogant, even though at times he tries to be sincere. While we can sympathize with a couple members of this gang, some are just downright dispicable.

It's brain smarts vs. street smarts, and we find that sometimes one or the other, isn't always a good thing. The ending is somewhat contrived, but I just could not look away from this movie from begining to end.