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As I write this, in December 2021, abortion is again a bit of a hot topic on the American political scene. For what it’s worth, I do not particularly have strong feelings on the issue myself. Or at least to such an extent that I would take up as much space in the review as that effort would require. That kind of nuance does not tend to work on the Internet, where you are a baby-killer or wish to turn America into The Handmaid’s Tale, and moderation makes you a coward. For that reason, this film appears to be a bit of a losing proposition which will fail to please everyone because of its relative fair-handedness. These days, it seems like almost everyone wants their echo chamber to be reinforced instead of challenged, even in the gentle manner this does.
This is, rather, a peripheral entry here. Lucy (Mackenzie, the fiancée of the director, now wife) is a girl. Who serves as a gun. So there’s that. An action heroine, however, not so much, at least in the genuinely understood definition. Like the issue of abortion, it is multi-layered. For Lucy is in her final year at a Christian high school, and she is bewildered by the revelation that her peer and close friend, Rachel (Marie), has undergone an abortion, primarily due to defiance of everything Lucy cherishes. After a teacher poses a moral quandary (essentially, the trolley problem), Lucy, in order to save future children, resolves to shoot the doctor (Carey) at the women’s clinic – an act she believes is necessary to perform. As a Ralph (Miller) classmate, she helps me brew my parents’ gun. But, does Lucy possess the requisite moral strength to support her actions, or will her internal conflict regarding the act undermine her resolve?
Mackenzie is too old, in my opinion, to convincingly portray a high-school girl (according to IMDB, she was 28 when this film premiered, and it is quite a good performance, nevertheless).
It’s evident how her faiths guides Lucy to a point her actions do not simply follow rationally, they are more or less compelled out of those beliefs. The less successful is the “de-programming” element, which consists fundamentally of her teacher shouting, “You cannot massacre the minority in order to save the majority. That is not how a civil society operates.” Well, regarding that matter Seems more like a society problem, to be frank. It’s a perspective that, in my opinion, needed more work for it to be persuasive.
It is possible that this is understated a tad too much. The shooting of the doctor is performed so subtly, it can be missed entirely, when it is perhaps, the most pivotal scene in the film. It definitely could have been focused on in a more realistic fashion. Regardless, there is no denying that for a budget of just $11,000 it is an achievement. It looks and sounds like a far bigger budget production, and so too is credit due to both of the Mackenzies, for being willing to grapple with a complex issue in a way that attempts (and largely succeeds) to avoid being condemnatory. While the majority of independent film-makers take the path of least resistance of genre movies, this is something more sophisticated. If not without imperfections, it should achieve its purpose of encouraging deeper thinking.
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