From Omeleto.
Three friends rob their landlord.
EVICTION is used with permission from James Lau. Learn more at https://instagram.com/evictionshortfilm.
Three different friends are struggling economically. Kenny faces eviction with his family; for Jackie, the family takeaway shop is about to be shut down. Together with their friend Chris, they decide to rob their rich landlord, whose place has valuables they can steal.
The break-in seems to go smoothly initially, but there’s one wrinkle — the landlord’s son is home. When things come to a head, they panic — and the fissures in their friendship begin to show as they deal with the consequences.
Directed by James Lau from a script co-written with Jason Njoroge, this absorbing short thriller-drama is a gritty London take on the classic heist narrative, told with tension, economy and a sly eye for irony. Its first half begins as the thieves meet in a car just before the robbery. The friends chat, their rough-and-tumble dialogue making clear their economic plights, their long-standing familiarity with one another and what’s at stake. They’re desperate for money to stay afloat, and they’ve resorted to robbery to make up the difference between what they have and what they need.
The home invasion is handled with skillful storytelling that builds suspense and tension with restless camerawork, fast-paced editing and discordant music, ultimately revealing that the home isn’t empty. A collision between the occupant and the robbers is inevitable, erupting in shocking, ironic violence. Through it all, actors Jason Njoroge, Waylon Luke Ma and Wesley Mbeka — as Chris, Jackie and Kenny, respectively — reveal not just the desperation driving them to rob, but the frayed edges between each of them, especially as they bicker and disagree with one another in moments of stress and panic. These friends, it seems, are not as synced up as they need to be.
The narrative’s action is compelling, but the aftermath proves more emotionally absorbing, as the three friends gather to divide their surprisingly paltry spoils. As they face down one another, they squabble over the small but incisive betrayals during the break-in, and they argue about who deserves the more valuable objects they’ve stolen. It’s a quietly provocative scene, as they grapple with the question of whose struggle is more difficult — as well as the limits of their solidarity as friends.
The push-and-pull of the three men’s dynamic ends up being the primary conflict of EVICTION, a narrative where the thrill of a heist is a bit of a Trojan horse for an intriguing portrayal of economic struggle. "It’s not enough!" yells Kenny at one point, and that phrase resonates with this set of have-nots. That sense of scarcity — and the self-centeredness, greed and mistrust that can engender — proves their undoing. It corrodes any potential sense of friendship or cooperation, and in the end, it’s every man for himself, using whatever means necessary.
