The Plan

Director : Matthew Kallish

Year : 2008

The film deals with the difficulty in breaking out of a rut. This is a story of a young man who tries to escape his current life and find another. This includes leaving his girlfriend, Claudia. 

The film is shot in black and white. The film opens with a shot of a highway as if looking out of a rear view mirror, suggesting leaving.

 There is a V.O of the young man explaining ‘his plan’ to leave. We see him in his room packing. This is a hand held shot focusing on the contents of his hurriedly packed bag, which implies a impulsive decision rather than a planned journey. We see him chucking together what he thinks he might need such as tinned food, tapes, camera, vodka, ‘What I may need to sustain life.’ Lastly we see him rejecting a call from Claudia on his mobile phone. We hear her message, which is both insulting and full of contempt for his plan, describing it as ‘a phase.’ His response is to look at the phone and the V.O say’s and ‘to leave Claudia....for good this time.’ Again suggesting that his life is in a rut and he is escaping.

This cuts to a shot of him walking towards a bank, with the V.O saying that he will take all the money out of his account.

Next shot is a highway taken from inside the drivers P.O.V (through the window screen) followed by a shot taken at the side of the road showing cars passing. The V.O then reveals his plan, to go to Vegas ‘and put it all on red.’

Cut to white with the film’s title: The Plan.

Through most of the film there is a constant sound of soft non digetic music which inspires a feeling of tension that something is going to go wrong. We see him on the side of the highway taking photographs we see what he is shooting as a wide angle shot. Next location is a rest stop. He appears from the rest-stop observing a notice board, advertising a casino. We hear a  voice, ‘that’s a good casino.’ The camera pans round to reveal a pretty girl, a short pice of dialogue prevails, later he takes a picture of her, she gets upset and walks away. He returns to the car park ask’s a truck driver for directions. Suddenly she appears in shot and steals his camera, we see this through a high angle shot. He runs after her through a maze of trucks he comes out the maze and we experience his confusion /isolation mirrored by the use of an extreme wide angle shot with him being the only person we can see.  He gets back in the car hears the phone ring- see’s that it is his ex girlfriend and triumphs over the temptation to pick up. It’s now night and we see the glowing lights of the casino with the inference that he is about to enter. 

The casino is shot in very tight frames revealing only the various gaming tables such as the roulette table. It is clever because despite never seeing a casino setting by using a soundtrack of a busy casino sounds and the cross cutting of hands moving across tables of games we are convinced of the experience. We hear the croupier announcing that there were ‘No winners’ on the roulette table and by that we realise our protagonist has been unlucky and lost all his money.

We go back to the rest stop, the protagonist is slumped on a bench. The shot is a mid shot which looks hand held and documentary in style, as does a lot of the film.  A sound of a mobile and the camera goes to extreme close up on mobile. We hear Claudia’s voice pleading ’ Come home Mitch, just come home’ Although his facial expression registers pain and defeat he looks really pissed. As the audience we are expecting him to submit and turn around and go home.
However, as he looks away with the mobile still to his ear we see his eye focus on something out of shot. He sees a picture of himself on the noticeboard.  The music which we could no longer hear suddenly comes back to underscore the feeling of renewed energy and hope. The camera goes into POV. He turns the picture over and sees the words, ‘Now we’re even.’ and the address of where the thief  lives. The film ends with an establishing shot of his car driving on the high way, we are left to presume that he is driving towards the new girls place. Interestingly the car drives in the same away direction it has done the whole film which again establishes that he is breaking free and not returning home.