July marks the year's midway point, at which time critics take stock of the best movies to grace our screens to date. Countless lists are popping up across the internet, but none contain the actual best movie of 2018, a thrilling and ambitious silent film that evokes shades of silent-movie slapstick comedy greats like Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Cops.
We're referring, of course, to the footage of a man and woman attempting to evade arrest at a convenience store in Alberta, Canada. The video, which went viral late last week after a CTV station published it online, accomplishes in less than three minutes what many movies fail to in more than 90.
Its characters ― 29-year-old Brittany Burke and 28-year-old Richard Pariseau, who had reportedly used a stolen credit card to buy a can of soda and thought they could flee law enforcement ― are emblems of ingenuity, a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. We can envisage their entire personalities simply by watching their relentless, and ultimately futile, quest to find a secret escape route.
What makes this film superlative-worthy is not just Brittany and Richard's chutzpah ― plenty of people would go to great lengths to avoid the Five-O, even in Canada, where cops probably ask if suspects want poutine, eh?
No, what makes this film superlative-worthy is how spectacularly well edited it is. The tension is Hitchcockian.
Let's break it down.
The scene opens in media res; our antiheroes have already been caught. They stand near the entrance with a policeman and the store owner's husband, who to the untrained eye looks like a plainclothes civilian taking the law's side. (We will hereafter refer to him as "civilian.")
But Brittany and Richard won't be thwarted so soon. They attempt to burst through the door ― the obvious first route ― but end up tumbling to the ground in a heap with the cop, tearing the oversized white T-shirt that Richie Rich is wearing from his back. Meanwhile, the store clerk stands idly behind the register. Just another day on the job.
