Spartan to the point of mysterious, "Bag Man" is a simple but effective short about a young African-American boy who is being raised by his mother in Harlem. She warns him about his behavior at his school and doesn't plan to take any more of it from him. She expects him to attend school, and then she heads out the door. She tells him she will be home late, but there is food for him to eat when he gets out of school. Naturally, the youngster has no plans about going back to school. Instead, he slides a bag out from under his bed, stuffs some canned goods in it, and heads out the door. A street hustler propositions him about using the bag presumably to run narcotics. The kid ignores him, gets on a commuter train, rides out of town, and winds up in the sticks, lugging the duffel bag off into the wilderness. He sets the canned goods on fallen timbers and backs away from it. Out of the duffel, he withdraws a hefty, dark, object that resembles a computer laptop, but this isn't what it is. This flat rectangular object turns out to be some sort of weapon. The kid is poised to take target practice when an owl lands on the timber. A moment passes, and the owl wings off into the sky. A four-door car materializes out of nowhere, and three rough-looking men emerge. They walk around to the back of the automobile, and the leader of the group acts like he is a door-to-door religious salesman. After a laugh, he gets his partner to unlock the trunk. A thickset man with a bag over his head gets out of the trunk. The little boy has concealed himself and waits with anticipation. The leader smashes the man with a bag over his head and knocks him sideways. These three aren't paying attention to their surroundings, and the kid with the strange firearm blasts their car. The trio of men try to reason with the child, but he kills them with shots from his sci-fi type weapon that transforms them into dust. The kid walks up to the man with the sack over his head.
Writers & directors Jonathan & Josh Baker has created a neat, little, fifteen minute melodrama, with excellent photography, and authentic looking settings. Of course, we don't have a clue where the child acquired the weapon, but then the Baker brothers are trying to surpass us. The Bakers used this fifteen minute as the basis for their later movie "Kin," which was a tenth as good as this short. Of course, the movie "Kin" boasts a bigger budget, but the Baker brothers raise more questions than they can answer.
"Bag Man" is fair away better than the movie that it spawned.
Writers & directors Jonathan & Josh Baker has created a neat, little, fifteen minute melodrama, with excellent photography, and authentic looking settings. Of course, we don't have a clue where the child acquired the weapon, but then the Baker brothers are trying to surpass us. The Bakers used this fifteen minute as the basis for their later movie "Kin," which was a tenth as good as this short. Of course, the movie "Kin" boasts a bigger budget, but the Baker brothers raise more questions than they can answer.
"Bag Man" is fair away better than the movie that it spawned.