So Schwartz IMs me today and tells me his short film Parabellum is finalized and released. A few months ago, I posted the trailer to it. It’s definitely worth watching as I thought it was done really well.
Watch: Parabellum Final Cut
You can also watch it on YouTube. However, the quality is rather bad on YouTube as always.
Parabellum (or para bellum) is Latin for “ready for war”. This short film has guns, violence, mafia, a very hot girl, and a very nicely done storyline. The story is about a triad hitman, his conscience, and the relationship between him, the triad’s boss, and the boss’ daughter. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the action sequences were done really well, as well as the dialog. The boss often brings up the phrase “in the old days” and I quote, “In the old world, if you were a dissident, the empire will not just kill you, but your entire family. Destroying a dissident’s love ones and lineage ensures there’s no chance of revenge.”
Spoilers: (Show)
There were a couple interesting scenes I noticed.
During the dinner, 2 old Chinese men walks in with their hands together congratulating something. However, their voices weren’t heard and I didn’t really understand the context of those 2 men. I asked Schwartz and he tells me that their actually the owners of NBC, a Chinese seafood restaurant in Monterey Park, which also means that dinner sequence was filmed there.
The scene right before the explosion, those beeps reminded me of 24. Maybe I’ve been watching that show too much.
In the final scene where you see a girl take out a sniper gun and aim it at Ivan, I couldn’t decided if that was the girl that didn’t die, or if it was a hired assassin. So I asked Schwartz again and he says it’s really up to interpretation, but he says it’s the girl. I was thinking, how does a girl like that suddenly learn how to use a sniper gun (reminded me of Natalie Portman in The Professional), but then I recall that we don’t really know anything about the girl besides that Ivan killed his father and later his mother. We have no idea who the father is and if the mom and daughter were connected to the mafia/triads at all.
Here are some screen captures of the video:
I hope you guys enjoy it!
