HIGH LIFE (Canada 2009) ***1/2
Directed by Gary Yates

HIGH LIFE is an edgy, low-budget comic Canadian heist movie that is suspenseful, funny and unpredictable.  The film provides too, lessons on the high life (mainly morphine) of the low life (the 4 junkies).  Yes, things one ought to know!  Based on the play and written by Lee Macdougall, the film is taken out so much in the open that it is hardly believable that the film originated from the stage.

Shot in blurry and faded colours simulating the year 1983 when the story is set, HIGH LIFE centres on Dick (Timothy Olyphant) a hospital janitor fired from his job as a result of a visit from psychopathic ex-cellmate Bug (Stephen Eric McIntyre). With two others, charming ladies’ man Billy (Rossif Sutherland, brother of Keifer) and Donnie (Joe Anderson), the ‘gang’ plans a non-violent precision job of robbing ATMs at the Mercer Bank.  The film is set in 1983 as that is the year of the ATM’s.

Obviously all goes wrong primarily because Bug is mental.  The plot takes different turns and ends up with a hijacked armoured truck with a guard and Donnie locked in.  The film has at its best moments nods to Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (the men arguing about nonsensical things) and the Yves Simoneau Quebec classic POUVOIR INTIMES (involving a hijacked armoured truck with a locked guard) but Yates’ and Macdougall’s film works primarily for its surprise element, unpredictability, wry humour, research in drug use, cinematography and also the great 70’s and 80’s soundtrack.

Music fans of the times will have an adrenaline rush with tunes like CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” heard on the soundtrack.  Other artists featured include Kim Mitchell and the Canadian band April Wine with their hit “I like to Rock” played to the fullest.  The film’s inside joke involves theft of April Wine cassettes.

Pink is the colour for the movie – used because of the colour of the opium extract and used again at the end of the film, brilliantly and ironically for another reason.

As a comedy, the humour is visual, verbal and occasionally dead-pan.  That should be sufficient to satisfy a wide range of audiences.  Running at only 80 minutes, Yates’ film is effective and efficient.  I loved it!