Big Heart City

By Matthew Scott Hunter

Sunday, June 15, 2008 | 10:29 p.m.

Gambling addict Frank (Andrews) gets his girlfriend pregnant, loses a lot of money at the racetrack and goes out to sea to fish for crab for six months. When he returns, his girlfriend is gone (surprise!). His best friend happens to be gone, too. Can you guess why they’re both gone at the same time? You’re right! Yet this mystery is the entire premise of Big Heart City. It would’ve made for a predictable but quick short film, but has acquired enough padding to reach feature length.

At first, Frank gets a lazy security-guard job, flirts with the checkout girl at the convenience store and leaves notes on the door for his absent girlfriend on the off chance that she returns to the apartment. Eventually, he begins lying to his boss about how things are at home, opting to construct elaborate fantasies about his girlfriend’s pregnancy and their marriage plans. Then he begins searching for her. He puts out a missing-persons ad in the paper and interrogates his own brother as to her whereabouts.

Then things start to get weird. A stranger follows Frank around, and Frank’s boss arranges an introduction with a prostitute, who Frank claims looks uncannily like his missing girlfriend. But there are no Vertigo-style twists to be found here. The hooker is just a hooker, and the stranger is just a stranger. Frank’s efforts to treat his girlfriend’s disappearance like a conspiracy or an alien abduction are rendered tiresome by the fact that it’s so obvious that she simply got fed up with him (with good reason) and moved on with his best friend. Case closed.

Frank’s pointless quest certainly doesn’t earn him any affability points. In a paranoid rage, he accosts his brother, with his brother’s young daughter present. He even threatens his friendly boss (character actor Seymour Cassel, lending seasoned comic relief). Even when Frank discovers what the audience always knew to be true and confronts his missing loved ones, viewers are more likely to side with them than with Frank.

The film attempts to distract us with some odd framing choices and artsy out-of-focus shots, but no matter how blurry the screen gets, it can’t hide the thinness of the premise.