Meskada [HD]

The Psychodynamics of Small Towns
Threads of the past weave through this interesting film about small town folks and their loyalties to each other when it comes to intervention from the outside - even to the defense of homicide. Josh Sternfeld wrote and directed this little thriller with a small cast of young actors who may just be more noticed after this dramatic effort.

Two boys - Eddie Arlinger (Kellan Lutz) and Shane Loakin (Jonathan Tucker) - drifters who go on the road to rob houses and sell their goods to pawn shops through their relationship with a bar girl (Grace Gummer, another of Meryl Streep's daughters) - accidentally kill a little boy during a robbery in Hilliard. The boy happens to be the son of a Meskada County Commissioner ( Laura Benati). Young small town detective Noah Cordin (Nick Stahl) and his new partner Leslie Spencer (Rachel Nichols) are brought in to solve the crime despite the fact that the town sheriff (Michael Sirow) and cohort (Michael Cerveris) think they can handle the...

New Trick on an Old Dog
On the surface we've seen this before. A small town detective is put on a case involving a somewhat politically prominent person. Here, it's a woman whose young son has been murdered during a home invasion. The evidence leads him back to his home town where he finds that solving the case involves more than connecting the dots.

What makes this worth watching is that not as much time is spent working clues and putting 2 and 2 together. Most of the time is spent on the people involved. There are no real "bad" or "good" people here. No sneering villains or femme fatales and no Dudley Do-Rights. This involves a town that's on it's heels and fighting for survival, and its residents have fallen on hard times. Nick Stahl, as the detective, just wants to do his job. He grew up with most of these people and has to conduct his investigation without seeming to be a heartless outsider coming down on the white trash. Then a certain thing happens that makes him question the moral fiber of...

average at best
The positive reviews here for Meskada are sort of puzzling to me. Not only does the movie not show the actual murder in the beginning (which is crucial by the way since showing the murder makes those who are guilty more enticing to watch) but the characters never really interact with any excitement either.

Basically a few guys have committed a horrible crime- they killed someone and try to play it cool by not saying anything about it to anyone. Eventually the investigation team adds up all the clues and, well, you can guess what happens. The point is, everything that *leads* to the predictable conclusion is uninteresting. These guys have regular conversations you'd expect from a group of smalltown country boys, go about their lives normally and only when the cops ask questions and raise more suspicion do the murderers ever get concerned. I was actually bored watching such cliched writing. Flat out bored. Very little happens for the first hour in fact.

Oh...

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