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Almost thirty years in with a career in stunts and acting, Lee Whittaker has since taken the initiative into filmmaking with at least two shortfilm projects in his wake. His latest, Aimee, is already making the festival rounds for sometime now, and making a fantastic case for its circulation since debuting at the Hoboken International Film Festival last May and winning Best Dramatic Short at CENFLO last Fall.
The project takes its cues from the script of a current feature film hopeful that strongly invokes Whittaker’s keen eye for kinetic story telling that still retains a sharpness in his desired aesthetic. Each scene is a brisk, fluid transition from one moment to the next that illustrates actress Amanda S. Hall in the already-immersed role of Jessica, an Afghanistan vet home from service and on a hard-hitting mission to rescue her sister from America’s festering underworld of underage sex trafficking.
Jamie Timmoms recurs throughout in vivid, myriad images and scenes as the title character, trapped with several captors all imprisoned in the same room, each with a mindset and resolve of their own. Embedded in the remainder of the narrative is the heightened drama and blistering action that ensues when Jessica and partner Dan (Whittaker) commence their hunt for Aimee’s kidnappers.
Scintillating imagery couples adequately with much of the overall tonal delivery that culminates the very brutal darkness reflective of the reality that cosigns Aimee. Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Skin Trade shares similar traits in this regard compared to the happy ending as seen in Pierre Morrel’s Taken, while with Aimee, what you’re left with is something slightly more gripping and inspiring rather than drab.
Aimee‘s next stop as of this review will be the Artemis Women In Action Film Festival in April, and serves as an especially fine entry into Whittaker’s filmmaking. As a shortfilm, Aimee delivers in all its bittersweet splendor with a spotlight focus on one of many key issues that threaten and terrorize America’s public trust, and for all filmic intents and purposes and for Whittaker and his team, one only hope this is just the beginning.
