Imagine, if you will, if you took all or as many ingredients of the average Quentin Tarantino film, and crammed it as much of it as possible into a nifty little online action shortfilm. Ask yourself, how much do you think you could replicate some of that visual filmic magic? Some might imagine it as pretty challenging, but not indie filmmaker and action actor Robert Dill. He’s taking on that formula and applying it to his craft with his fellow members of the EMC Monkeys for their latest love letter to the Kill Bill and Resevoir Dogs helmer in the new shortfilm, Lucky Strike.
Dill, an up-and-coming film professional since around 1999, eventually found himself adding stuntwork to his repetoire, performing for various award shows and dinners with EMC by 2008, all in the course of pursuing a career in film and television. After spending a little more time behind the camera for the past few years, for Dill, a comeback was necessary, which begs the question: Why Tarantino?
“In all his films, Tarantino always has the quirky, sort of silly sense of humor about everything,” he says. “It’s like he and his films never take themselves very seriously at all. Almost to say ‘Yeah, we all know this is bullshit, so lets just make sure we’re both clear on the subject’ [laughs]. I thought that would be really fun to emulate that a bit, by having a serious situation feel almost ridiculous even though it’s clearly very serious, and somehow beautiful at the same time, with music and cinematography and other things.”.
Watching this, I could only imagine how A Band Apart would have interpreted this exact kind of scenario with the same performers. It’s experimental at best, but you can definitely hear that playful seriousness in the overall tone, creativity, and timing of the dialogue, as well as the action and editing in between.
You can catch all eight minutes of this lovely little gem in the embed below, right down to the mid-credit blooper clip. And yes, you want to see the blooper clip.
Well played, Malay…well played.