DARK DEAL Review: Braden D. White Leads Another Median Work-In-Progress Indie Action Effort
As someone who typically champions independent film, I also look for certain elements of growth. I’ve seen at least three projects featuring actor, martial artist and producer Braden D. White, who’s collaborated with a few directors in lead roles, firmly placing himself on the map as a burgeoning talent. His latest, Dark Deal, reteams him with Double Cross helmer David Ferguson for a near seventy-minute thriller that plays off many of their strengths as exhibited in past work.
Carrying the lead role is White who plays Danny, an ex-special agent tasked with bringing down a ruthless crimeboss named Mathyss. The arrest turns out to be a bust due to lack of physical evidence and witness turnabout, resulting in Mathyss’s acquittal, and Danny’s exile into witness protection. Several years later, we catch up with Danny, a family man who, in accordance with his earlier resignation, now assumes a new identity and employment in a restaurant where he unwittingly becomes the star of a new viral video after taking down an unsatisfied customer wielding a knife.
Little does Danny know that the video has also blown his cover when Mathyss rears his head once more, finding Danny and forcing him to do his bidding as a thug for hire in order to help eliminate his rivals. As it stands, doing so will be the only way Danny can protect his wife Vanessa and her daughter, Abigail, forcing Danny to choose how far he’s willing to go before doing the unthinkable. Trapped by past ghosts that now haunt his family and threaten his future, Danny must think fast and fight hard if he’s to get out from under Mathyss’s grip and save his family once and for all.
It’s an exciting enough premise in Dark Deal that should pull anyone’s interest who likes action films at any level. The final product in its delivery, while subjective and entirely up to the viewer, falls short of any progress from White’s past projects. Indeed, some of the acting measures as well as what you would expect in the low-LOW budget end of the indie arena, carried otherwise by a good story and a slew of acting performances, namely from co-stars Mattea White and Rodney Smith, and Carl Rhonin who chimes in as prime henchman and footsoldier under Matthys, as well as the film’s fight coordinator.
Lead actor White continues to exude a level of potential that’s consistent with his previous roles, notably Skin Circuit and Double Cross – the latter which you can find on Prime Video for rental. Some technical issues on the version of Dark Deal I screened are more to do with some of the film’s mismatched aspect ratios for certain shots which causes the footage to look annoyingly narrow at times, in addition to moments where the film is tinted so low to the point where it’s barely watchable, including a night time scene where Danny is thrust into a scuffle with drug dealers in the dark of night. I’m told this was an effort by White and the producers to avoid the film from looking too bright, and unfortunately, the film tends to look more drab than it should.
I won’t coat anything here either as far as White goes. His acting is passable enough that it measures up to the caliber of his indies, although he does get outshined by the acting of his other co-stars. To add, he’s a noticeably sizeable person, and considering the prevalence of big people as action actors and performers capable of their craft, he’s got the talent, but more work certainly needs to be done if he’s going to be a standout by any measure as an actor and a screenfighter on one unified front. Where Dark Deal sits on the scale here is a matter of opinion that, at the least, deserves watching beforehand.
Dark Deal hails from.FergusonFilmz and TKO Productions. The film is currently slated for a World Premiere at Gentry Cinema in Checotah, Oklahoma on September 20.
