Images courtesy of Marcellus Cox
LIQUOR BANK– 4 STARS
When it comes to films depicting people’s battles with sobriety, they often lead up to the inevitable intervention. They will focus on the gradual decline of an individual reaching rock bottom. Still, movies love their happy endings, meaning—when the time is right and the central character is ready—plots like to crescendo on the epiphany of accepting help or change. The many folks who have gone through this know that the initial decision is only the start of further challenges. Marcellus Cox’s poignant short film Liquor Bank follows steps on that harder path.
Liquor Bank opens on a nightstand with a ringing phone alarm and an empty beer bottle. As Fabian Tehrani’s camera zooms out and pans to the right, we see a young man named Eddie (actor and ADR recordist Antwone Barnes) waking up with another empty longneck beside him. So far, we don’t know if the bottles are his, yet the clues point to the start of a hangover morning after a bender of a night. Sure enough, as the man stumbles to the couch and takes a chug of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey Whiskey from an already-open half-pint flask, the ugly hints are confirmed.
A knock on the door brings a second character to Liquor Bank. Baker (Sean Alexander James of The Morning Show and CSI: Vegas) has come to check on Eddie. Today was to be Eddie’s one-year sobriety anniversary, complete with a party thrown by his peers at his Alcoholics Anonymous group. Baker is astonished by the mess he finds instead, and a verbal confrontation ensues, even if the first retort out of Eddie is how much he’s “not feeling it.”
LESSON #1: TOUGH TALK FOR TOUGH EXCUSES– Eddie lays out his sour excuses fitting his situation. He’s an ex-Marine. He’s miserable all the time. Relationships and employment have been lost causes. To Eddie, liquor gives his life meaning. Baker hears all the rants and verbal lashings. He stands his ground to push back with the reality that life is hard, and liquor doesn’t make it better. Baker offers no sugarcoating and questions the severity at hand. It is tough talk for tough excuses.
LESSON #2: SECONDARY VICTORIES AFTER DEFEAT– Liquor Bank knows that audiences don’t often see the stories that continue after the big commitment to change. They don’t see the temptations, choices, relapses, and secondary victories. In showing Eddie broken in losing a benchmark achievement, Marcellus Cox is unshy to shed light on a time of defeat instead of victory with Liquor Bank.
Based on an actual story known by the filmmaker, Liquor Bank recognizes that days, hours, and minutes themselves are victories, let alone making it a year. All it takes to ruin that hard-earned success or streak is a single mistake. Eddie has had that unfortunate moment. Where he goes from here—whether it’s extending his mistake into a worse spiral or getting back on track—is the crux of this stern short film.
LESSON #3: HAVE SOMEONE IN YOUR LIFE THAT DOESN’T GIVE UP ON YOU– That’s where the presence of Sean Alexander James as Baker makes all the difference, lifted by the dramatic ambiance of Luke Richards’ background musical score. Baker offers the proper reality check, saying the right, rudder-correcting things with a strong will and mountain of patience. He represents man-to-man understanding and also the disappointment that comes from someone in your life who doesn’t give up on you. Alas, Baker’s sponsorship and support only work when both men are there for each other. That means having something not to give up on as well.
Both James and Antwone Barnes put forth strong performances as two different perspectives of turmoil. They work the respective ground their characters are standing on with conviction and a longing for shared respect. Through his sharp script to stay on message and breathe within this difficult encounter and the tight editing of James L. Gilmore, writer-director Marcellus Cox (Mickey Hardaway) puts true struggle on display with fortitude, unquestionable integrity, and impressive poise. We deserve more artists putting forth these kinds of exercises of empathetic validation.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1291)
