‘The Martini Shot’: Galway Review

Dir/scr: Stephen Wallis. Ireland, Canada. 2023. 85mins

There’s a moment, about 10 minutes before the credits roll on The Martini Shot, that one of the characters pleadingly asks, “what does it all mean?” This feeling is likely to be shared by audiences as they come to the end of an infuriatingly opaque, unrelentingly pretentious narrative which attempts to distill ideas about faith, love and mortality into the story of a terminally ill movie director mounting his final project in rural Ireland. And while answers to life’s big questions never come easy, this film by Canadian director Stephen Wallis (whose former projects include 2021 comedy Defining Moments, which featured Burt Reynolds in his final role) complicates matters unnecessarily.

 Infuriatingly opaque, unrelentingly pretentious

Produced by Canada’s Indie Magic Studios, filmed in Limerick in 2018 and is now making its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh, The Martini Shot, which is named after the film industry term for the final shot of the day, may well draw attention for a cast which includes Matthew Modine, John Cleese, Derek Jacobi, Stuart Townsend and Fiona Glascott. Despite their best efforts, though, neither they nor the beautiful Irish scenery can lift this story out of its existential quagmire.

Modine plays Stephen, a successful film director who appears to be coming to the end of his life (his sarcastic doctor, played by Cleese, uses words including “terminality” and “finality”) and is determined to make a final ‘transcendental’ film. This involves shooting random sequences across rural Ireland with a minuscule crew and a cast who largely appear to be dead. 

That’s no judgement on their performance skills; actors Philip (Townsend) and Errol (Jacobi) are, actually, deceased — the former as a result of a drug overdose, the latter an aged English thespian who, inexplicably, now haunts a dilapidated Irish ruin. Stephen has ‘brought them back’ for this final project, which largely seems to be taking place outside of the corporeal realm. He is able to recast any of these people at will, and can change or stop the action at any time.

Are we witnessing the fantasies of a dying man? Or perhaps he is already dead, and this is a cineaste’s version of heaven? Occasional random chats with his daughter Rose (Cat Hostick) on a windswept cliff suggest something different. “Do you even wonder why you created emotion?” she asks, before speculating what will happen to the universe when he is gone.

With the religious overtones becoming more overt in the film’s second half — Philip visits a church looking for absolution, conversations are had about grief and faith — it is suggested that Stephen may well be God. He certainly thinks he is, that much is clear. Yet true meaning is not a concern for a screenplay made up of endless metaphors and inspirational quotes, delivered via omnipotent voiceover and clunking dialogue. It is perhaps the point that we do not fully understand him — God moves in mysterious ways, after all — but it becomes increasingly hard to sustain.

Despite Stephen’s pious tone, he also has a habit of relying on wearying real-world cliche. Early on, he recasts his middle-aged male therapist as pretty young Dr Ehm (Morgana Robinson) with a short skirt and tight blouse. “It doesn’t seem right for someone with such nice breasts to keep them covered,” he notes to his beleaguered assistant, the pointedly-named Mary (Glascott); a stark, sleazy contrast to his usual poetic observations. Mary, too,  is ‘the one who got away’, the much younger woman for whom Stephen holds a candle and emotionally manipulates throughout. Disappointing, particularly for a film with such high pretensions.

Even a seasoned cast cannot lighten this material. (The standout is Jason London as cameraperson Chet, whose relaxed and humorous delivery is a calm oasis). Editing tends to present the film as a series of non sequiturs rather than a cohesive whole. It finishes with that famous Jean Renoir observation, that ‘a director only makes one movie in his life, then he breaks it into pieces and starts again’. With The Martini Shot, it feels like we are being given the broken pieces, but with no instructions on how to assemble them.