Shot is told in split-screen, as Mark Newman (Noah Wyle) tries to hang on after being accidentally shot by Miguel (Jorge Lendborg Jr.)
SHOT (Jeremy Kagan, 2017)
Village East Cinema
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, September 22
212-529-6799
www.citycinemas.com
www.shotmovie.org
Jeremy Kagan’s Shot is a profound film about gun violence in America, seen through the eyes of both the victim and the shooter of a horrific event. Noah Wyle stars as Mark Newman, a Hollywood sound mixer who is working on punching up a scene in a Western involving a shootout. Later that day he goes to meet his estranged wife, Phoebe (Sharon Leal), for lunch during which she asks him to sign divorce papers. When they leave the restaurant, they are talking on the street when Newman gets hit in the chest by a stray bullet accidentally fired by Miguel (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), a teen who was thinking about getting a gun from his cousin because he was being bullied at school. Most of the film occurs in real time as police officers Anderson (Brad Lee Wind) and Ramirez (Maria Russell) respond at the scene and EMTs Jones (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), Garcia (Dominic Colon), and Turner (Tommy Day Carey) rush Newman to the hospital, where nurses Gina (Eve Kagan), Samantha (Joy Osmanski), and Marci (Elaine Hendrix) and Dr. Roberts (Xander Berkeley) try to save his life as Phoebe looks on. Meanwhile, Miguel, who is not a bad kid, tries to figure out what to do next as he is on the run through the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, terrified by what he did and what the consequences might be. Producer-director Kagan (The Chosen, The Journey of Natty Gann) and editor Norman Hollyn tell both parts of the story at the same time using split screens as cinematographer Jacek Laskus puts the viewer right in the middle of the action, occasionally shooting from Newman’s point of view as he wonders if he will live and, if so, will ever be able to walk again.
Written by Anneke Campbell and Will Lamborn based on an original story by Kagan, Shot is filmed like a special episode of, well, ER, on which Wyle played Dr. John Carter. Longtime film and television director Kagan, who won an Emmy in 1996 for directing an episode of another hospital drama, Chicago Hope, previously worked together on the television series The ACLU Freedom Files. The narrative often borders on melodrama and comes close to being overwhelmed by genre clichés but is mostly able to avoid them, although it is very much a message picture; at the end, facts about gun violence take over the screen. “I have learned that telling a captivating dramatic narrative is the most effective form of cinematic influence, so I chose to make a dramatic movie rather than a documentary,” Kagan, who spent seven years putting the film together, including meeting with doctors, nurses, EMTs, and gunshot victims as well as advocates on both sides of the gun-rights dilemma, explained in a statement. Wyle (The Myth of Fingerprints, The Californians) gives a brave performance, the camera rarely leaving him, zooming in on his face and eyes as he comes to understand what he is truly facing, while Lendeborg Jr. (The Land), in only his second movie, is effective as the guilt-ridden accidental shooter. The film is meant to make viewers never want to pick up a gun, and it certainly makes a great case for that.