"Little Favour" is the first offering from Benedict Cumberbatch's Sunny March, Ltd. production company. The 21 minutes short released through iTunes on November 5th of 2013 holds the distinction of being the highest pre-ordered short in iTunes history."Little Favour" is the most brilliantly acted, professionally produced student film I have ever seen.
How the flaws in this script escaped the notice of an actor as intelligent, experienced and erudite as Benedict Cumberbatch is almost unfathomable. Possibly, it can be attributed to how incredibly busy he was during pre-production. Or, perhaps, he simply trusted the very inexperienced Patrick V. Monroe (writer/director) and best mate Adam Ackland, (producer) to develop the material. Possibly he felt, as friends often do, that criticizing them would jeopardize the relationships the actor so highly values.
This is why doctors aren't allowed to operate on their loved ones.
"Little Favour" was financed almost entirely by willing contributions from fans of Benedict Cumberbatch after the actor filmed an online appeal. Of course, fans responded enthusiastically giving far more than was necessary to produce the short. But if Patrick Monroe had appealed for funds, if he perhaps had done a "trailer" for "Little Favour" as he did for "Oscar's Escape" (found here on YouTube) the chance people would have financed him is very slim.
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| 23 seconds of walking. |
Sunny March has said it would like to reimburse all investors. And while they have also said the picture had the highest number of pre-orders iTunes ever recorded, they have posted no figures.
Having pre-ordered the film, myself, I can believe more than thirty-thousand people worldwide paid the approximately $3 to see it. I hope that was enough. Because Benedict Cumberbatch got his fans' money based on his well-deserved reputation as an extraordinary actor, a man of integrity and drive who inspires trust in a wide range of people.
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| Gritty hero. Minus grit. |
The film is beautiful, as well. It was also a cliché-ridden mess of stereotypes, underdeveloped characters, illogical action and wasted story opportunities. The director managed to take pivotal moments and simply allow the critical visuals to be out of frame. An essential underlying theme of the story concerns the horror perpetrated on children forced to become killers. The tragedy of child-soldiers. (We know this because the producers made sure to explain the story to us in detail before the film was released, including parts not shown or even implied in the film.)
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| Look Ma, no gun! Or hand, or action. |
Yet, when the innocent child (played quite nicely by Monroe's daughter Paris) reaches out to touch Nasty Bad Guy's gun, WE DON'T SEE IT. We never see either the gun or her hand as shown in the screencap. This very pivotal moment, this foreshadowing, this connection, is not only off screen, but when the Bad Guy suddenly objects, we really haven't a clue what he's talking about.
This is a blunder of monumental proportions. The moment sets up the girl taking the gun from the standard-issue psychopathic Russian mobster-killer evil Bad Guy in the next few seconds. Yet - we never see her hand in proximity to or on the gun to place this unbelievable feat even marginally within the realm of suspended disbelief.
But this isn't the worst thing this writer/director does. This is the worst thing he does:
Those children are not humans without conscience and have not been made so. They are broken, in pain, and often take their own lives later on. The toll in human suffering is enormous.
He made her wink. There are many many dramatic choices here to convey the depth of suffering of these children and show them for the victims they are. But he presents us with a cool little killing machine. It's reprehensible.
It's bad enough having this ludicrous character show up in Ace's flat:
Because we all know how much sense it makes for some guy with a sword to walk in with something (one begins to suspect a cast-off muffler from Sherlock) across his face to ... what was he going to do with that sword? Kill Ace, the only one who knows where "James" is?
It was bad enough that when we first see Ace be kick-ass most of the action also happens out of frame so we have no idea how he does that. Then, there are the other bad guys who come in (identity undisguised) and take the girl, but not Ace. Nope, too easy. They have someone hide in his vehicle and kidnap him.
Yet, all this laughably nonsensical bullshit is totally overshadowed by the egregiously inappropriate wink.
Contrast this dialogue-heavy 20 minute mess with the clean, tightly-written 11 minutes of "Inseparable," a short Benedict Cumberbatch also starred in released in 2007. (Which can be seen here on YouTube.) An extraordinary amount of character and story information delivered with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum use of the visual medium.
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opportunity to connect these characters emotionally with one another or the audience, the chance to explain something of Ace's supposed PTSD, wasted in what looks like an homage to a Cumberbatch Jaguar commercial.
Whatever Monroe's intention, it does not serve or advance the story. It does not reveal. It does not inform. In a feature a director can indulge himself with this sort of shot. In a short, every second needs to be story.
What this film lacks is characterization, realistic narrative, a logical construct. Every flaw can be traced to the amateur writer/director. It's impossible to fault the production values of this project. We are only left to ask, with some sympathy for our much-beloved star: Oh, Mr. Cumberbatch, what were you thinking, allowing this to happen?
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