Among the many mysteries of Amazon’s new movie: Why is it called ‘Blow the Man Down’?
Nicely constructed, low-budget thriller “Blow the Man Down” (streaming Friday on Amazon Prime) features many layers that writer/directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy manage to keep on an even, slowly unfolding keel. It opens in song, on an ocean pier, with fishermen belting out the title song.
But why they’re singing it, and why the film takes its name from it, will remain a bigger mystery than the multiple mysteries that move the film along.
The location is the fictional Easter Cove, Maine, where the Connolly girls, Pris (Sophie Lowe) and her younger sister Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), are sharing a drink before attending the funeral of their mother.
Though this appears to be the beginnings of a character study on the differences between the siblings – they’re close, but Pris is the responsible one, Mary Beth is the wild child – it soon heads off into all sorts of directions, with many other people.
Post-funeral, Mary Beth heads for the local bar for a few drinks, but has some trouble with local bad apple Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who comes on to her, won’t let up and (spoiler alert!) is killed by her in self-defense, with a harpoon assist.
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Uh-oh, this is not the kind of thing you want to be caught up in in a small town. Good thing steady-nerved Pris is around to figure out what to do, to put a plan in motion to get rid of the body. But this proves to be no easy feat, and in one of the film’s best darkly humorous lines of dialogue, as they’re trying to stuff him in a cooler, a shaken Mary Beth says, “What are we supposed to do, Pris? Chop his arms off?”
Before you can catch a breath, a body washes up onshore, and when the sisters find out, they panic. But it turns out to be a bullet-riddled woman (no harpoon marks!) who worked at the BBB, and she wasn’t exactly preparing breakfasts or making beds. Look out! Nasty, foul-mouthed working woman Lexie (Gayle Rankin) is soon making things even murkier.
By the time the expanding series of plotlines introduces a bag with $50,000 cash, and the Connolly knife has gone missing, you’re wondering where else this story can possibly turn. Some sleepy little town!
