Oct 22, 20182 min read

Bonnie short film

★★★★

Written by: Fred Cavender

Starring: #KaitlinMcGill, #LloydLewis, #DanRock, #StanTranVan

Bonnie short film review — Bonnie short film

Golden-eye for a great story and a Licence to Kill audience expectations, filmmaker Fred Cavender serves up a brand new short film that should be Moon-raking in the dollars...and can you guess the genre?

That's right.

Clown horror.

Sorry that should have said #spymovies.

Lloyd Lewis plays Jim, a suavely dressed man who enters a bar looking like James Bond. He approaches a pretty woman called Bonnie (Kaitlin McGill) pays for her drink and orders his own all the while a voiceover is communicating commands about retrieving a disk of high importance. As the two onscreen characters embark on a flirty repartee, numerous signposts emerge that suggest all is not as it seems.

Known for twisting the format of well-loved cinematic tropes, Cavender is in his element with Bonnie, a short film that not only knows and respects its secret agent heritage but has a lot of fun skewing it. The slick aesthetic is complemented wonderfully with a ballsier-than-Bond style that is bordering on #GuyRitchie especially the final moments and credits of the short.

The performances were solid but unremarkable. Lewis, who has thoroughly impressed in other Cavender movies, doesn't appear to have enough substance to chew on in the script. The cliched lines see him treading water for most of the duration and just when Bonnie looks to be injecting a sumptuous catalyst into the plot...it ends. McGill (another Cavender regular) is good but, again, could have been developed further. The simple premise which Cavender opts for leaves them in the cold slightly.

ABOVE: the official Movie Trailer for Bonnie.

Some of the set pieces were cleverly crafted. A running gag with a drunken bloke (Dan Rock) was nicely executed, lending a degree of farce to the proceedings. As was the use of voiceover - which was all the more impressive in hindsight.

Where the short succeeds is largely in bolstering the portfolio of Cavender's work. Another genre box ticked and using his cheeky approach to boot. Whilst I urge viewers to stay tuned for a feature length from the writer and director, this outing is unlikely to make the top 5 of his films. Instead, it is an enjoyable and fun take on the spy movie that should not be For Your Eyes Only…

I'll get my coat.