Eddie (Antwone Barnes) is fighting a new war at home. Depressed and an alcoholic, the former Marine just missed his one-year of sobriety anniversary with his AA group. When his sponsor, Baker (Sean Alexander James) shows up the next day, what follows is a dramatic profile that illuminates what’s really at stake when mental illness and a bottle of bourbon are the only modifiers in the room.
That analysis escaltes with writer/director Marcellus Cox’s Liquor Bank, the latest short drama after pounding the pavement recently with his indie feature, Mickey Hardaway. At twelve minutes, Liquor Bank lends a momentary snapshot of the impact boozing has. The ever dogged Baker makes it clear the multitude of things he’s done to help Eddie in the past, while reiterating how capacious the consequences of his actions really are.
Push eventually comes to shove amid the unfolding drama, as Eddie tries and fails to lash out, physically, signaling just how determined Baker is to fight for a cause that he’s ultimately made his own. Still, there’s no amount of sense that even Baker can knock into Eddie unless he’s truly willing to look past the amorphous sanctuary and comfort of boozing.
At best, Liquor Bank is a modest, yet endearing story of hope – something that perhaps a lot of people lack which makes a shortfilm like this all the more essential. Indeed, addiction makes hopelessness easier to bare, making the path to recovery challenging in almost every conceivable way there is, and not every road from addiction is successful, sadly. I guess that’s one thing worth minding as we watch Eddie in the remaining final shots of the film as he’s on the bring to doing something terribly drastic, but, like I said, Liquor Bank is a story of hope. Again, that’s really what matters, isn’t it?
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