Planning your first-ever big-time crime gig is never an easy task, as novice crooks Chris (Dominick Cost) and Juan (Darius Lassiter) will tell you. Especially when uncertainty brews from within their own ranks, when they enlist the help of Damon (Nicholas Sisti) to complete their team. A “friend-of-a-friend,” Damon is a reluctant participant in their scheme, leaving the friends in a rather awkward state while they wait for their driver. This is Tomorrow’s Bandits, director David Ambrose’s bold swing at a self-contained crime thriller.
The short opens with a ringing phone, highlighted by a lone spotlight. The camera whip-pans to Chris, who answers it before slamming the device down to continue the montage. Cigarettes are lit, and plans are drawn up to raid the local pet store’s assets. A perfect intro if ever there was one, especially from a stylistic point of view. A film about a tense heist prep needs proper fuel to run on, and Kerri Sitty’s cinematography is just that. Shot in a monochromatic color scheme, the camerawork in this film is a joy to see unravel. It’s motivated and inventive, often resorting to a singular light source to illuminate its subject or the environment to frame different characters in action.
Yet the aesthetics of Tomorrow’s Bandits do not get in the way of its actual storytelling – when it would have been very easy for Ambrose to let the flashy cinematography dictate his narrative. Instead, the focus is placed on both Chris and Juan as they desperately try to figure out Damon, whose eerie silence and oddball attitude threaten to jeopardize their team’s synergy. Cost and Lassiter are terrific together all while Sisti doesn’t so much as blink when portraying Damon, matter-of-factly declaring how he will use the rest of Chris and Juan’s pickles for his last-minute sandwich. There’s something off about the guy, yet the two friends just can’t place their finger on it, and that really puts their heist strategies into question.
Ambrose and fellow screenwriter Sisti do a solid job of wrapping things up in a traditional sense, but the final few frames do conjure the desire to see beyond what we get with the trio. Though with a length of just under 8 minutes, the fact that we would want to see more from such a brief runtime speaks volumes about Ambrose’s ability to make a lasting impression on his audience.
You’ll definitely have a lot of fun with Tomorrow’s Bandits offbeat style and dialogue. Come for a heist; stay for a nifty little character dramedy with an unpredictable edge.
