Brooklyn 45 (2023)

June 19, 2023 david.s.smith HCF Reviews 0

Brooklyn 45 (2023)
Directed by: Ted Geoghegan
Written by: Ted Geoghegan
Starring: Anne Ramsay, Ezra Buzzington, Jeremy Holm, Larry Fessenden, Ron E. Rains

If you’re expecting a cop-comedy prequel, look elsewhere. Despite the misleadingly schlocky poster, Ted Geoghegan’s latest is a sombre Christmas-set chamber piece about the aftermath of World War 2. A group of old friends reunite following the unfortunate suicide of Lt. Col. Clive Hockstatter’s (Fessenden) wife. Seemingly she killed herself after nobody believed her that the “kraut” (i.e., German) woman down the road was a secret Nazi. Now Hockstatter has gathered his guests to attempt a séance to speak to her one final time. Among them are his former interrogator Marla (Ramsay), her gentle partner Bob (Rains), blowhard medal-wearer Paul (Buzzington), and the suave, charismatic shooter Archie (Holm), who may have committed war crimes. However, the doorway into the next realm is left open they contact the dead, represented by a low-budget CGI arm we thankfully don’t spend long with. Across a real-time 90 minutes, they try to find a way of closing it.

It’s an intriguing set-up that lends itself to a small, moody, character-driven piece that could generally be performed on stage with few changes. And during its best moments, this is what Brooklyn 45 is: a group of morally compromised and clearly traumatised people coming to terms with what they saw on the battlefield. For a movie like this that doesn’t rely on set pieces or big scares, much of its success comes down to the actors. Thankfully all are superbly cast, and the way they manage shifts in power shows a sensitivity to the material. All commit to their parts, grounding the fantastical plot in something human. I was particularly impressed with the ever-reliable Larry Fessenden whose show-stopping monologue about understanding why his ex-wife did ‘what she did’ perfectly sells why he wants to do a séance. It’s an emotional career high for one of the genre’s modern icons, and finds the line between the personal and the historical. The horrors of war have left him open to asking existential questions: what awaits us on the other side? Do our life’s actions matter in death?

Yes, the whole ‘demons we carry with us are scarier than those we can summon’ premise has been done, but Geoghegan finds truth in it and elevates the familiar message into something more profound. Thankfully, there are no cheap winks or knowing lines, but his call for reason in times of division and hatred is as relevant as ever. And as much as these characters have failed to move on from the past, this film suggests its creator thinks humanity needs to do this more broadly. The problem is that the subtext gradually becomes the main text, and we’re sometimes privy to circular, exposition-heavy conversations about the nature of conflict and command. What backing stories we get are interesting enough, but it’s all too thematically neat: “who are you to judge me?” etc. Its one-by-one interrogation structure means the film’s second act suffers and starts to feel like a short stretched out, or perhaps an hour-long episode of The Twilight Zone.

Fortunately, it regains momentum in the third act, delivering a blunt but thematically appropriate finale that pushes back at genre expectations. Without going into it too much, the moral conundrum the movie keeps returning to is excellent. And though the correct answer seems obvious, the things it forces characters to consider provides a microcosm of the decisions they will have had to make during the war. The stakes are high, and the wrong call is unthinkable. The conflict it provokes also offers them the potential for growth and perhaps even empathy – not that this is a typical story of good and evil. A couple of days later and the more I think about it, the more I liked it. Geoghegan previously impressed me with the more splattery vintage horror homage We Are Still Here. Though with this one, he’s made something that seems more personal. The festive season is always a good time for quiet reflection, and this is a welcome addition to the genre advent calendar.

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