Get The Hook.
By Fred Leland

June 17, 2003

Small town boy with a life going no where, decides to make tracks for the big city. That's pretty much the backbone idea for Howard & Dodge's By Hook or By Crook. It's a movie that relies on fast cuts, film effects (grainy texture, handheld, etc.) and an underlying Alternative Rock / Punk soundtrack for energy, which the film needs because there's little octane provided by the script.

Shy (Silas Howard of Tribe 8) has lost his father and on his way to losing the family home to the bank, when a story on the local news about a bank robbery piques his imagination. Shy watches with great interest as a witness, played by Joan Jet, recounts the story to a local news crew. So the frustrated Shy thumb's his way into San Francisco with plans to start taking from the rich and giving to the poor, which you suspect is Shy himself. But Shy soon finds out that he doesn't have enough money to buy more than a loaf of bread and a banana. He falls asleep in a doorway, where he's woken up by a group of young kids playing ball. The curious children ask Shy if he is a "girl" or a "boy," to which Shy replies "both;" a fact that you just accept unless you really don't get the gender not equal to sex thing, or the term hermaphrodite.

Destitute and wandering, Shy stumbles across his future partner in crime, Val (Harriet "Harry" Howard,) who is getting beat up by a tall blonde. Val's obsessive-compulsive, borderline schizophrenic nature becomes quite evident as the two get to know each other in a late night diner. And through out the film we see that Val can't pass up a phonebook without trying to call his birth mother. But the pair decides to visit a small bar, where Shy steals Val's wallet and ditches him. Shy takes the money from Val's wallet and buys a toy cap gun and gets a room in a run down hotel. Unaffected by Shy's quick disappearance, Val goes home to his girlfriend Billie (Stanya Kahn,) who is as big a loon as he is. Decorated by postcards and drink stirs, their little house is so full of thrift store knick-knacks that Val & Billie sleep in the attic. Like Shy, you just accept Val (Valentine) and his relationship with Billie (see paragraph two above.)

Shy finds Val and uses him to con some money out of a hardware store clerk. The scene doesn't work, because you can't imagine that they wouldn't have been kicked out for acting so odd on the store security cameras. Unfortunately the film is full of scenes that are nothing more than "oh we're out doing stuff," or hard to hear dialogue that often goes no where. Hook or By Crook doesn't get on its feet until about a 1/3 of the way in, when Val, Billie, and Shy steal a car in order to heist some money from a coke machine by the Bay Bridge. It isn't long before the film meanders off again, and you're left wondering if Shy is ever going to attempt a big robbery.

The music is great and the documentary-hybrid style is appealing, but Hook or By Crook lacks a script with a clear direction. I know some critics like movies that flow like a stream of consciousness, but if it's done just for kicks, it strikes me like a gimmick. In this film it could have been used more sparingly and with greater care in order to earn the characters more sympathy. Instead I found myself annoyed with the film in general. However, I did like how Hook or By Crook set itself down in the "real" neighborhoods of San Francisco, unlike most Hollywood films or car commercials that tend to favor the polished upscale areas around Pacific Heights. If you're a resident or former resident, part of the fun of watching movies shot in San Francisco is guessing the neighborhood where they were shot. Much of Hook takes place in and around the Mission, Folsom, South of Market areas, often looking toward the East Bay. If Hook has anything going for it, it's making former transplants, who for whatever reason couldn't make it there, feel homesick.

Fred presses on By Hook or By Crook

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