What happens when a crew of small-time thieves picks the wrong house on the wrong night? In William Wiersma’s The Score, one bad decision snowballs into a body count that leaves an entire neighborhood running for cover.
All U.S. veteran Tyler Hayes (Carter Moczan) wants to do after serving his country is return to his wife, Tracy (Lluvia Giacoman), and build a home. While the couple is out on the town, a gang of thieves, Carlos (Donny B. Lord), Dante (Zyshonne Lang), and Derek (Stephon Bradley), breaks into their house and steals Tyler’s cash. Unfortunately for Tyler and Tracy, they walk in on the burglary. The thieves tie them up and take off with the money.
Upset and freaked out, Tyler lets his military instincts kick in and recruits his friend to break into the thieves’ auto shop and steal the money back. In the process, Dante catches them, and before he can do anything, Tyler’s buddy shoots and kills him…but they get the money, and no one sees them.
What Tyler doesn’t know is that his buddy just killed the cousin of Sav (Mario “Rio” Rivas), the neighborhood kingpin, and Sav is out for revenge. It’s only a matter of time before Sav goes through all the homes Dante robbed that night and figures out it was Tyler, putting his friends and Tracy in grave danger.
Tyler Hayes (Carter Moczan) pours a round of drinks for a friend in The Score.
“Upset and freaked out, Tyler lets his military instincts kick in and recruits his friend to break into the thieves’ auto shop and steal the money back.”
They just don’t make gritty urban thrillers like William Wiersma’s The Score anymore. They are our modern westerns, where crime and drugs run rampant in a city of laws, but the law doesn’t care. Ordinary people…and ex-military are forced to fight for justice and revenge, and just like a western, no one comes out on the other end unscathed.
Director Wiersma, along with writer Sylvia Okafor, has constructed a solid indie action thriller. Sav is about as ruthless as villains get, always making an example of someone to get the point across to everyone in the room. No one in the film is off-limits, and hand-to-hand combat and guns are the weapons of choice. Carter Moczan turns Tyler into a sympathetic but grossly flawed character. None of his choices is the right one, and the simple task of getting his money back sets off a deadly chain reaction.
For a low-budget indie, Wiersma produces a good-looking film. One might point out that the entire film had to be re-recorded via ADR. Personally, I like the way it came out. Reminds me of most of my favorite Jackie Chan films and old-school dubbed martial arts movies.
William Wiersma’s The Score is a gritty, old-school action thriller that pulls no punches with its truly ruthless villain and a hero who can’t make the right choice to save his life. Wiersma delivers the kind of brutal story Hollywood studios refuse to make anymore without a big-name actor to screw it all up.
For screening information, visit the The Score official website.
