Little Favour

This film makes absolutely no sense. Everything about it was average and an incredible cliché. I thought Nick Moran's character was shockingly poor and unoriginal, the run-of-the-mill Russian mobster but with a dreadfully bad accent. The title design was a disgrace, they used the same cheap font in the poster as the titles!! Overall I'm disgusted given the fact the production raised over 80K for this film on Indiegogo and I've seen far superior shorts over the past fews years, made into features even, for less than 10K. I sincerely hope this doesn't become a feature because the screenplay is nothing special and it's unfair for other filmmakers that don't have connections (i.e. Cumberbatch) who are trying to make a name for themselves.

the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch is only good point. but it is far to be enough. the story is confuse and when it seems clear it is silly. the tension, the fight scenes, the dialogs, the ambiguous end , each must conquer different sort of public. and that purpose remains unrealistic. than, it is a slice from a story not a story itself. a kind of salad with too many ingredients, without of credible taste. and the great error remains the generous possibilities of story. the idea is not bad , the cast and a more inspired script could be ingredients of a decent movie. but a Prometheus is more important than story. and art of confusion , so large...

I understand that the short films are a bit limited to describe the whole story, so, it rarely has the whole story in it. As it says in this review's title, this short film doesn't have any prologue and so, while I was watching, I didn't have any idea what I was watching at, such as why those people are looking for James and also what this short film is all about. And then I came here to rate the film and found out the storyline and I read it. Then I know what this is about.

If it has some explanation about the story in the short film, it'd be better.

The summary of this film listed on IMDb sure says a lot more about the plot than you'll see when you watch "Little Favour"--a lot more. All this back story is absent in the short and so it's not exactly what you might expect.

As to the story, it's very, very simple. Two men meet (one is Benedict Cumberbatch) and the other asks Wallace to do him a little favor--watch his kid. The kid is a girl who appears to be about 11 years-old. Soon after the pair arrive at his place, however, a ninja(?) and some other baddies invade the apartment. After putting up a good fight, Wallace is taken prisoner and horribly beaten. Then, surprising things happen--but I really cannot say more.

The film is a pretty bloody mess--and folks may squirm at seeing all the blood. I didn't enjoy all the killing and gore, though the story was extremely well produced and directed. Patrick Viktor Monroe is a relative newcomer and did a nice job--though I do wonder HOW he got Cumberbatch for the film, as this actor's career has been super-mega hot lately and a new filmmaker could never afford someone of his stature. Worth seeing but very, very dark and gruesome.

This is the most beautifully produced and brilliantly acted student film I ever saw. It is also, despite the high-quality talent, a mess and muddle of a film. The villains are hackneyed stereotypes, the dialogue cliché-ridden and the character actions incomprehensible. The directing is so poor that at the pivotal moment of the film, the action we need to see is out of frame.

Loyal Cumberbatch fans will surely praise it to the heavens and his extraordinary talent is on display, but it's simply not much of a story and poorly told, at that, with the very serious issue it touches on at the end handled in an offensively shallow manner.