Bag Man (2014) User Reviews

This Short Surpasses the movie made from it!

[zardoz-13 · 8/10 · 3 September 2018]

Spartan to the point of mysterious, "Bag Man" is a simple but effective short about a young African-American boy who is being raised by his mother in Harlem. She warns him about his behavior at his school and doesn't plan to take any more of it from him. She expects him to attend school, and then she heads out the door. She tells him she will be home late, but there is food for him to eat when he gets out of school. Naturally, the youngster has no plans about going back to school. Instead, he slides a bag out from under his bed, stuffs some canned goods in it, and heads out the door. A street hustler propositions him about using the bag presumably to run narcotics. The kid ignores him, gets on a commuter train, rides out of town, and winds up in the sticks, lugging the duffel bag off into the wilderness. He sets the canned goods on fallen timbers and backs away from it. Out of the duffel, he withdraws a hefty, dark, object that resembles a computer laptop, but this isn't what it is. This flat rectangular object turns out to be some sort of weapon. The kid is poised to take target practice when an owl lands on the timber. A moment passes, and the owl wings off into the sky. A four-door car materializes out of nowhere, and three rough-looking men emerge. They walk around to the back of the automobile, and the leader of the group acts like he is a door-to-door religious salesman. After a laugh, he gets his partner to unlock the trunk. A thickset man with a bag over his head gets out of the trunk. The little boy has concealed himself and waits with anticipation. The leader smashes the man with a bag over his head and knocks him sideways. These three aren't paying attention to their surroundings, and the kid with the strange firearm blasts their car. The trio of men try to reason with the child, but he kills them with shots from his sci-fi type weapon that transforms them into dust. The kid walks up to the man with the sack over his head.

Writers & directors Jonathan & Josh Baker has created a neat, little, fifteen minute melodrama, with excellent photography, and authentic looking settings. Of course, we don't have a clue where the child acquired the weapon, but then the Baker brothers are trying to surpass us. The Bakers used this fifteen minute as the basis for their later movie "Kin," which was a tenth as good as this short. Of course, the movie "Kin" boasts a bigger budget, but the Baker brothers raise more questions than they can answer.

"Bag Man" is fair away better than the movie that it spawned.

Never Saw the Movie

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 18 June 2019]

Pretty standard stuff. A young boy who could easily become a gang member has a duffle bag that contains a deadly weapon. It is your basic disintegrator gun like Buck Rogers may have owned. Where it came from is never revealed. Why this kid has it is never revealed. But it does feel good when he nails a bad guy. It's really a lead in to a forgettable movie.

Intriguing – which is the film's key selling point

[bob the moo · 3 January 2015]

A young boy gets woken up by his mother as she heads to work from their home in Harlem. Heading out for the day with a duffel bag, the boy is approached by a hustler looking to employ him, but continues on his way to the train station. Heading out of the city with his bag, the boy starts walking out into the countryside, through ruined buildings and rolling landscapes. And that is about as much as I want to say on this, and the reason for that is that the fact you are not sure where this is going is perhaps the main pleasure of it.

In terms of narrative it will leave you with more questions than answers, and to be honest there is not too much of an actual plot here, more just playing with the viewer by giving us several films we didn't expect on the way. It is beautifully shot and paced though; it goes for half the running time without really doing much but following our silent character, but yet it still engages and draws us in, whether it is the one-sided conversation with the hustler, or just beautiful steadicam shots following the character through rusting barns and down a train line. The music play into this by being patient and reflective. When the developments come they are a surprise and quickly lead to more which are impressive technically but also engaging from a narrative point of view. It must be said that the film does rather drop its effects and narrative on the viewer for impact, then gets out the door; it is hard not to see this for what it is, and you do need to forgive it for drawing you in with a rather measured tone, twisting it, then ending on the same measured tone. Were it a blockbuster it would be called out for style over substance, but to do that here is to do a disservice to how well it draws you in.

As such it is the sense of intrigue that is what makes this work as well as it does. Everything else is built around that – cinematography, the plot, the music, everything. As a result the level of intrigue is likely to leave the payoff not quite up to the job, but for me it worked on the basis of what it did well.

Solid plot twist in the second half, but otherwise really bland

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 28 August 2018]

"Bag Man" is an American live action short film from 2014, so this one is almost 5 years old and it was written and directed by Jonathan and Josh Baker and this quarter of an hour got additional attention recently as it is going to be adapted into a full feature movie that has Oscar nominee James Franco in it among others. The kid who plays the main character here also managed to become a regular on a relatively new television show. But back to this one here. the first half had me thinking we are in for a race-related family drama perhaps about a black boy growing up in a poor neighborhood, but the second half takes the film into a completely unexpected direction. It becomes pretty much a Sci-Fi crime movie eventually and I was positively surprised by that. Still it wasn't strong enough to let me forget about the really weak first seven minutes that offered absolutely nothing to me to be honest. Yes there is some fun and nice effects in the second half, but it just doesn't offer enough depth to impress me I must say. So all in all a thumbs-down, but I am still curious about the full feature film, not only because I like Franco quite a bit. Watch this one here when it gets released. Or skip it altogether. You won't be missing much.

good intentions

[Kirpianuscus · 5 May 2019]

It reminds many films from same genre. The boy with a mysterious bag, the way to the wood from the city, the powerful tool for justice and revenge and the status of first bite before the film itself. I prefer the first part of film. The mother to work and the promise, the boy to the school, at the first sigh, Because the story is to large for give more than an impressive gun reminding the games of childhood and the dreams inspired by action - Sci. Fi . books or films. Sure, good intentions and a decent short film. But too many ways.