The first two clips from Oliver Sherman, both with Garret and Donal Logue, showed up online this week.
Daily Motion has the first one:
And the second one is on YouTube:
The film will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival on September 13 and 17, then at the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival (Sept. 18 – 26), and if you’re in North Bay, you can catch this screening on October 16.
Here is a longer description from the TIFF site (if you hit the link, they also have a couple of pics):
Does saving someone else’s life make you responsible for them? This is the central question of this penetrating film about existential angst, which is grounded in subtle oppositions: friendship and duties, innocence and manipulation, past and present.
Seven years have passed since Franklin Page (Donal Logue) saved the life of fellow soldier Sherman Oliver (Garret Dillahunt) on the battlefield. It feels like it’s been a long time for earnest and hard-working Franklin, who has since moved to the countryside with his wife, Irene (Molly Parker), and their two children. But seven years seems a mere heartbeat for solitary vet pensioner Sherman, who still bears the scars of the horrors he survived. When Sherman pays a surprise visit to Franklin, who hasn’t seen or heard from him since they left the army, it sets off a chain of events that first time feature director Ryan Redford skilfully crafts into a poignant and meaningful story.
Lost and shy, Sherman is a welcome guest in the Page home. He reconnects with his old friend over beers on the porch and during nights on the town. But when he overstays his welcome, the seemingly placid countenance of this veteran starts to crack, and he lashes out in outbursts of aggressiveness and resentment toward Irene. Drawn from a short story by Rachel Ingalls, the film plunges from quiet character study into psychological thriller.
As Sherman, Dillahunt (of Deadwood fame, and starring in John Sayles’s Amigo, also screening in the Festival) is nothing less than splendid. He conveys the hurt of a lost soldier, and hints at an emotional time bomb ticking beneath the surface of a calm exterior. Parker, who previously acted alongside Dillahunt in Deadwood, is equally compelling as the warm and understanding wife of a no-nonsense man. Franklin is embodied to subtle perfection by Logue. These fine performances buoy a gripping and memorable film.
