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Cyrus (Dylan Hobbs) is a low-level punk doing dirty work: drugs, breaking and entering, beatings, and killings. Simple, mindless work fit for mindless people. But Cyrus has brains and ambitions. He wants to give the orders. He wants wealth, power, and prestige. He wants people to be afraid of him. He wants a lot of things. So how does this man take a wrong turn and become the Joker?
Made with just $5000 and probably much more than that in favors and good will, Joker Rising tells the origin story of Batman’s greatest enemy. And tells it from the Joker’s point of view, with a narrative percolating through the story as Cyrus follows his path. You watch because, in almost every scene, Cyrus takes another step along that path.
And the path is laid out very cleverly. He starts out picking drugs from Ivy (Sara Nunez), and he and Croc (Manuel Eduardo Ramirez) deliver them for Oswald (Bob Buhrl). Then he and Croc start recreational snorting, and the walls Cyrus put up around himself because of his abusive father begin to break down. He’s torn between the best and the worst he can be.
There are a lot of good parts to this movie—touches and foreshadowing that could easily be missed but shouldn’t be. But if there’s one part of the movie that stamps it as a good one, it’s when Cyrus meets the prostitute, Harley (Katie Young).
The weakest point of the movie is its production—mainly due to a lack of experience rather than budget. A couple of scenes at the beginning are badly framed. And shaky cam to show nervousness or drama in a static scene is soooo two weeks before last Thursday.
In his role as Cyrus, Hobbs has to keep everything contained until the explosion at the end of the movie, but he keeps the flow going. For example, he keeps a straight face and turns his head to one side, just a few times, to show he doesn’t quite get something. It’s a nice trick.
Hobbs has had a fair bit of work since this piece, and I expect that he’ll have a lot more.
Harley’s Katie Young has gone on to other roles, including Carrie Kelly in Grayson: Earth One. Her role here is pivotal, her acting is spot-on. When she listens as Cyrus describes his confrontation with the Bat, she lies on her stomach with her feet in the air like a little kid and lights up.
Harley carries much of the emotion for Cyrus, and for a moment you’ll hope that they can avoid what you know is coming. You’ll have little sympathy for the coke-snorting maniac, but the film builds sympathy for Harley well, right down to the conservative clothing she wears when soliciting customers.
This is when Batman shows up. Though he easily beats up a group of henchmen, he looks at Cyrus, ignores him, and leaves. Cyrus gets enthusiastic for the first time in the movie when he describes to Harley how he survived. That becomes the rise of the Joker and the fall of Cyrus as events take control. Surviving the Bat is a buzz, just like the coke.
Joker Rising is a fan film, but if it were in a theater, I’d buy a ticket. As it is, just under 150,000 people have already watched it for free on YouTube (and you can join them). The filmmakers are already working another movie, City of Two Faces—and I’ll be watching that one, too.
