Bushwick (2017)
Directed by Cary Murnion
When an unknown military force invades Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood, young student Lucy and war veteran Stupe must rely on each other to escape and survive.
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What critics compared Bushwick to
But while The Purge pulls viewers in with the curiosity of a regimented, codified system of socially prescribed lawlessness, Bushwick springs it on its characters suddenly.
Crushing its duo between looters, street-gangs and Texan guerrillas, Bushwick has such a blistering sense of tribal anarchy it’s already been dubbed Escape From New York meets The Purge , but the stylistic motor is very clearly Children Of Men : directors Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott seize events on swerving handheld cameras in a surge of single takes, edited to resemble one continuous tracking shot.
Aside from the "I'll be right back" moment, Bushwick tosses out the rulebook with a vengeance: drug use doesn't necessarily equal death, vengeance isn't always righteous, and there are no protected classes on this battlefield, which in its best moments combines the role-reversal/neighborhood pride of Attack the Block with the "we are the enemy" mentality of The Purge .
They offer the affectations of Birdman without any of the self-aware commentary, attempting to augment what’s otherwise a topical riff on The Warriors in ways that add little to the mix.
There’s also the directors’ insistence on emulating the illusion of the film as one long take (obviously digitally cut together from multiple takes), care of such forebears as Children of Men and Birdman, but just like in Birdman there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to doing so besides pawing at some sort of technical bravado, and just like in Children of Men the effect is immersive, only Alfonso Cuarón is a genius who understands the terror of the worlds he’s immersing the audience within, and Murnion/Milott seem to think that all the POCs in Brooklyn are rapists, gang members or clueless drug addicts.
Early on, it becomes obvious that cinematographer Lyle Vincent is hiding invisible cuts in these long takes, but it’s not nearly as seamlessly executed as it was in Birdman .
Like a distilled version of “Birdman,” the movie looks and feels as if it’s strung along on a handful of nigh-endless takes; this approach is established in the train station as the story begins, and continues on from there as Stupe does his best to keep Lucy from getting her head blown off.
Children of Men, Gravity and Birdman all made an original use of the technique but this doesn’t even stand up to the flat-out madness of Hardcore Henry.
Shot, like Rope, Russian Ark, Silent House , Birdman , and Victoria, in what appears to be one continuous, unbroken take (although "hidden" cuts are easy to spot), Bushwick plunges viewers into a street-level experience.