Small Town Murder Songs is the promising and well crafted feature from emerging filmmaker Ed Gas-Donnelly, filmed with strong visuals of on an Ontario an hour North of greater Toronto.
Peter Stormare plays Walter, an aging police officer in a small rural Mennonite community investigating the murder of a pretty young woman from out of town. The rural police are empowered, often to the parallel to investigate the matter when the provincial police retreat and focus their efforts elsewhere.
In this respect the film, as a document of Rural Canada is fascinating: exploring conflicts between religion, separatism, and provincial power pitted against regional municipal governments. Those seemingly on the inside are treated as outsiders, documenting and mapping a power structure – both internal and external within a narrative with a strong emotional core is remarkable. One must have imagined Gass-Donnelly and his team studying Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter.
In addition to Stromare, the film features strong performances by Martha Plimpton (who we have seen too little of in recent years, excellent in roles such as this and in Tim Blake Nelson’s Eye of God) and Jill Hennessy. So is Stromare as Walter, an officer with past secrets attempting to rebuild himself in the image of God. The film’s chapters (titled after bible verse) explore ironic divisions of divine law and the law of the land.
Well directed, the film tragically unfolding in a conclusion that at once is seen from a mile away and is also unsatisfactory. Running under an hour and a half, a pivotal arch feels missing or at worst rushed in an otherwise is a strong narrative. This cop out had turned what might have been a great film into a good one. I await Gass-Donnelly’s next film.
6.5 out of 10