Confidence Of a Tall Man
“Confidence of a Tall Man” is directed by Michael McCallum and centers around the 50th anniversary of a local bar run by Tommy (played by Johnny DeMarco) who took over duties of running the bar when his father past away. The bar financially is broke, and Tommy is left with no options other than to sell the bar. Tommy’s incompetent drunk brother Teddy (played by Ken D. Orlich) wants to help Tommy sell the bar, but through his stupidity and misplaced need to help leads the bar to the brink of being closed down for good. Will Tommy be able to have the legacy his father built live on after him, or would it be all for nothing, and Tommy may be better off closing the doors. This film delves into the struggles of owning a small business, and the relationship between a broken family struggling to keep it all together.
At first when watching “Confidence of a Tall Man”, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. Sure it has the humor factor going for it, but I couldn’t help but think “What exactly is the point of this story?”. After seeing the short I can say that the main heart of the story is by way of Tommy and Teddy’s relationship. The bar in a lot of ways could be used as a symbolic metaphor for Tommy and Teddy’s relationship. You can see it’s struggling to stay afloat, and whatever headway does get made is set back immediately by outside forces they can’t control. I liked seeing these parallels in the story and It’s very smart to interweave these themes together.
I like how you can see that Teddy WANTS to help Tommy, and can see the stress and pressure Tommy is going through with the bar, but he just doesn’t know the right way to help him. The performances by both Johnny DeMarco and Ken D. Orlich are so well realized and seem so realistic, it carries the entire film on their backs and I couldn’t praise their performances more. DeMarco is very subdued in his mannerisms when the world seems to be crashing in front of his characters’ eyes. When the film moves to its climax, DeMarco goes from subdued to unhinged in a beautiful way and I was very impressed with what he was able to bring to his character.
On a technical level, the film is shot very impressively, with detailed camerawork, cinematography, and sound design, I couldn’t find any issues with the project overall. The bar looked lived in and had a feeling of age and tradition to it like it had been handed down by many generations. I liked how the lighting worked within the bar, where it didn’t feel like a new, trendy bar with lowlights and thumping bass music, but brighter, and more friendly in my opinion. The stories pacing and the tone was consistent throughout, which added with how impressive the other technical aspects made the film even more enjoyable of a watch.
Overall, “Confidence of a Tall Man” is a film with heart and emotion. Dealing with the stresses of family and a failing business, the relationships and characters in this film are on their own worth the price of admission. Definitely, check this one out when you get a chance as you won’t be disappointed.
