"A mild-mannered husband and his dimwit best friend seek revenge on his meddlesome neighbor.  See what happens when a prank goes bad."  



Watch the teaser trailer!

This film is completed!  (Read the review below)  Also, you can see more information about this film on IMDb.   If you are interested in purchasing this video, contact us for more information.

We have added more photos of the production and movie to the Photos link for Just Rewards.  Or click on the link in the upper left-hand corner.

Become a Fan of Just Rewards on Facebook!      This film was screened at the daVinci Film Festival in the Local Filmmakers category in March 2010. 

Crew

Director - Brian Martin
Unit Production Manager - Chris Martin
Director of Photography - Todd Spiegelberg
Editor - Teri Martin
Camera Operator - Patrick Sevigny
Stunt Coordinator - Hunter O'Guinn
Continuity Coordinator - Sherri Lewis
Stunts - Jeddy "Is Cool" Piper
Lighting Consultant - Jimmy Carter
Original Music Composed by John Pulvers

Just Rewards was written by Oliver C. Shorty

“Just Rewards” – Review – Justus Ballard

“Just Rewards,” the first short film from Mad Ox Productions, is an entertaining black comedy about two friends who get drunk and pull an ill-advised prank on a nosy neighbor. 

Matt Richardson (Eric Jones) is a mild-mannered man who has bad luck with neighbors and bad taste in friends.  Part of the fun of the film is trying to figure out whether the neighbor or the friend is the more irksome.

There’s nothing subtle about Kyle Johnson (the friend, played by Jose Ortega) and Ethel Newberry (the neighbor, played by Jodi Altendorf). The over-acting on the part of Ortega and Altendorf, while excessive at times, is entirely appropriate to their roles as two of the most annoying people in the world. 

Kyle, who gets the best (and worst) lines, is pure walking id, the kind of guy who wears a Porn Star Productions t-shirt and, upon showing up at your house, dry humps both your front door and your wife.  He’s precisely the sort of friend you need to make excuses for being friends with.  Ortega brings an utterly believable lack of self-awareness to his performance as a manic, hypersexualized buffoon.  Thankfully, Eric Jones’s low-key, bemused reactions to Ortega’s antics and the fact that this is a short film prevent Kyle from becoming truly tiresome.

Jodi Altendorf, as the annoying neighbor Ethel Newberry, has a more difficult job than Ortega.  Most of her role consists of standing at the edge of her property spying on her neighbors.  Despite having very little dialogue, she’s able to convey an overwhelming air of disagreeability in each scene.  We hate Ethel almost immediately, and our dislike for her grows more pronounced in each succeeding scene.

Ethel is particularly nasty to her husband, played by Calvin Ward.  Ward does an excellent job in the role of the kindly, understated, and put-upon Albert Newberry, who serves as a focal point for our sympathies—and, intriguingly, as a harbinger of what the future might hold for his younger neighbor Matt.

The camerawork and direction shows a willingness to use the camera expressively and cinematically.  Some of the angles are odd simply for the sake of oddness, but those self-indulgent shots are in the minority.  For the most part, the shifting points of view, the interesting camera set-ups, and the mild experiments with story structure all contribute to the experience of the film.  The sequence where Kyle and Matt get drunk and play foosball is particularly well-constructed, perfectly capturing the sort of boozy afternoon that inevitably leads to bad ideas. 

There are a few rough spots in the volume levels of the soundtrack, and a couple of scenes (including the climax) are a bit longer than necessary.  However, at 23 minutes, nothing drags on to the point of distraction, and the pacing and the editing are quite good. If this is what director Brian Martin and his crew can do on a first outing, it’s a good sign of better things to come.

Overall, “Just Rewards” is an entertaining first effort from Mad Ox Productions, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with next. 

Justus Ballard teaches writing and film at Chemeketa Community College.

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Last Updated:  January 30, 2010