Taking The Job
Bubba Brady (Flueger) is down on his luck. He’s desperate to find a job, but no one is hiring and he’s running out of time and money. One day, while visiting his favorite diner, a stranger comes in. This stranger, Jim (Perlman) is quite a character — he introduces himself to Bubba and seems eager to befriend him. As Jim is a drifter-type, who only plans to stay for exactly three days, Bubba offers him a place to stay. The two quickly strike up a friendship and Jim tells Bubba about a contact he made some time ago that said if he ever needed a job, he would give him one.
With Jim just passing through town, Bubba goes to the address that Jim had to get the job. He has no idea what the job entails until the day after he is hired. He then finds out that his job is to commit a murder to someone who is willing to be killed. The job certainly pays well — $200k — but Bubba is conflicted on whether or not he can do this.
He ends up consulting Jim and they plan to secretly do the job but without Jim’s involvement being known to the employer. Things go bad, and then get very weird. Up until this point in the movie, it’s sort of a dark comedy and dramatic. After this shift, the intensity ramps up and it becomes a much more powerful drama.
I enjoyed the film and was intrigued throughout. I thought the script was good and the acting too, but I don’t know that I got much out of either ending however (the extra features include one alternate ending).
On DVD
The Job arrives on DVD in a standard case and a single disc. On it you’ll discover several trailers for other Magnolia Home Entertainment releases followed by a nice menu. There are no English subtitles, by the way, but there are Spanish subtitles. The presentation quality in general is just fine — expect a clean widescreen image with Dolby 5.1 Surround.
As for extra features, there are two:
-Making of The Job (26 minutes) – Shem and Kiki, and other cast and crew, talk about taking the film from play to film and other challenges involved. It’s worth a look.
-Alternate Ending (8 minutes) – The alternate ending is pretty wild. It presents most of the main characters in a very interesting and unexpected way.
With that, lets get to the summary…