Commuter Productions
How often has this happened to you? You see a new movie and maybe the idea is interesting, but the lead is a dull, uninteresting white guy? And say, it’s an indie movie too? Why, that should mean the potential for something unique and diverse might exist, but does it? Or does it feel like the only non-white characters are props along the way? Anyway, I’m rambling.
A Patient Man comes from writer/director Kevin Ward in his first feature film. The movie stars Jonathan Magnum (mainly known as an improv comedian for many years) as Tom Alexander, a man suffering from severe trauma. Immediately the movie plays a trick on us by switching up the timeline in a way that isn’t clear until nearly the end of the movie, but by then it’s hard to understand quite why it was done that way.
Tom lost his wife in a terrible car accident that he was hospitalized from, so he takes the bus instead, unable to get inside a car because of his trauma. The movie shows him finally coming back to work after his time off, although perhaps he’s not remotely ready for it. He takes the bus every day and ends up meeting another middle aged man named Aaron (Tate Ellington). At first, it seems innocent enough.
But Tom starts looking into his wife’s death, which was never solved, the perpetrator having fled the scene of the crime, or so it seems. The movie gets increasingly confusing about the timeline until it’s hard to keep track of what’s happening and when it’s happening. Tom is assisted by a detective or something named Maya (Elaine Moh, one of the few people permitted to express complex emotions in the movie), and soon Tom gets increasingly lost in his obsessive quest to find the accidental killer.
Tom’s work life (where he was great before), is now sub-par, and his boss George (David Jahn) seems concerned, while rising star Rami (Amir Talai) is clearly on the track to replace Tom. Slowly, the movie begins to add a few twists and turns, until it ends where it begins, with a very ambiguous and unclear conclusion.
As a sort of mystery narrative, it’s not bad, but it’s essentially impossible to follow along without foreknowledge, because all of the secrets are hidden until they are revealed, no clues in sight except vague flashbacks. That’s fine, but it’s not so satisfying when we figure things out — a whimper instead of a shout.
Another issue is that Jonathan Magnum, who has decades of experience as an improv comedian, must play Tom as a man so damaged he expresses no emotions at all. Perhaps it’s rational or even logical as a trauma victim, but as a character to follow, he seems a cipher and without much personality. We are told he had a loving wife and we see the barest glimpse of it in a flashback, and told he was talented at work, but instead we see him bomb in the only funny scene of the movie.
The movie is paced alright, even if it got difficult to track what was going on at times. I think the potential for the director is there for something stronger and better in the future, but the writing is a bit too flat and the characters uninteresting. Visually he has a better eye, but the story feels both unoriginal and too complicated. Hopefully he does something better in the future, he has the potential for it.
Want to see A Patient Man and judge for yourself? Click on the image below to see the movie, and be sure to come back and tell us what you thought!
A Patient Man has a run time of 1 hour 33 minutes and is unrated.
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