I’ve had *that moment*.
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I’m a pacifist. Since hundreds of years before the dawn of history, “the pacifist” and “the realist” have engaged in a debate, which I have had myself on occasion. It goes like this:
Pacifist: If everybody was a pacifist, the world would be peaceful.
Realist: You’re an idiot.
You tell me who won that debate. Spoiler alert: It ain’t the pacifist.
I’ve never been in a physical fight or thrown a punch at another human being. Trust me, I am aware that this probably has more to do with luck and privilege than the flawless execution of any moral code, but it’s still true. That being said... Even my pacifist self had *that moment*.
The moment I am referring to will happen to everybody at least once. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or woman, a cop or a Shaolin monk, a botanist or a barber on Fleet Street. It is the moment where your response to the thing that just happened is pure, unadulterated RAGE and your only instinct is to respond with VIOLENCE.
For me, it was... Two decades ago? I’m old enough that time is meaningless and the difference between a decade or three is minimal. Let’s just say it was a while ago. I was running down on the boardwalk. A car was coming towards me, and I noticed there were two teenage kids leaning out the front and back windows. Just as I was thinking “why on earth would they be doing that?” THWACK THWACK I felt a stinging pain in my chest. I looked down, and I was covered with egg. Both kids had thrown an egg at me, as the car was driving towards me, and both had hit my chest.
I don’t know that I’ve ever felt pure rage the way I did in that moment. I might have literally seen red. The car drives past me, the kids are laughing, and I swear if I had a rocket launcher in my hands at that moment I might well have smoked those foos. Like... I WANTED it. I wanted the rocket launcher.
Then the car disappeared down the road, and I calmed down. The fact is... It wasn’t that bad. Yeah, it stung like a bitch and I was going to have a couple bruises, but other than that I could run home, wash my clothes, take a shower, and be more or less completely fine.
Despite that, for those precious few seconds after the eggs hit my chest... I wanted to blow up a car full of teenage idiots. This is me. The pacifist. I was a pacifist back then, as well. I always want to avoid conflict and never getting into a physical confrontation is very important to me. Yet... I uncovered the rocket launcher exception?
That’s the effect of *the moment*. You don’t know when it’s going to come, and it will come at different times and intervals for different people... But it will come. The good news for me is, I *didn’t* have a rocket launcher. Or a gun.
Which brings me to the movie I’m supposed to be reviewing, but haven’t mentioned even though I’m already almost halfway through the review. “5 Lbs of Pressure”. A character in the film explains the title in the very first scene (other movies can take lessons from this! I watched all of “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” and still don’t know what that title means, although it’s a lie, there is more than one take in the film). 5lbs of pressure is all it takes to squeeze the trigger on a gun. As a reference, I just asked Google what else you can do with 5 lbs of pressure, and it helpfully told me you can “push air through a shallow water diffuser line”. Thanks, Google! The point is, 5 lbs isn’t a lot. Pulling the trigger on a gun is incredibly easy, from a pure mechanical standpoint.
So the film is about what happens when you combine *that moment* with a gun. As you would imagine... The consequences can be devastatingly final. So it was with Adam (played by Luke Evans, who usually plays “British Guy” but here plays... ?? We’ll get to that later). When he was young, Adam was hit by *that moment*, and he happened to have a gun with him, so he shot and killed another person. Ended up spending 16 years in the clink. Adam might have been a young punk at the time, but he wasn’t a psychopath, or a violent killer. He was a kid who happened to have a gun in his hand when that moment of absolute rage hit him.
Because, normally, you can recover. Sometimes in a second or two. Take a deep breath. Punch the steering wheel. The problem is... It takes a lot less time than a second or two to pull the trigger.
So... Yeah. “5 Lbs of Pressure” is an anti-gun movie. But it’s not like proposing legislation to TAKE AWAY YOUR GUNS or framing gun users as maniacs or anything like that. It’s simply demonstrating... That gun violence is exceptionally easy, and you don’t have to be a psycho to pull the trigger, you just have to be in the wrong place or the wrong frame of mind in the split second it takes to pull that trigger and change everything. The film isn’t preachy. It doesn’t really stand on a soapbox and pelt you with ethics. It just... Shows you the consequences of an action that’s all too easy.
“5 Lbs of Pressure” is also... Not necessarily a great movie from a technical standpoint. In fact, I would go so far as to say the acting here is actually bad. The actors really lean on performative tools, such as bonkers accents. Luke Evans, who I like, is no exception. He has discarded his british accent for an I don’t know what on earth he’s going for, and he kind of uses it as a crutch to anchor his performance. In addition to outlandish accents, we have the cigarettes. I get it. Actors love cigarettes. You can fiddle with them, you can try to say lines with the cigarette still in your mouth, you can take beats between puffs. Yeah, you can do *stuff* with a cigarette, and whoa nelly do the folks in “5 Lbs of Pressure” love to go nuts with their smokes. It’s... Acting. They look and sound like they’re acting.
The script is... Fine. “Hollywood thrives on coincidence” is a saying that I might or might not have just made up, but coincidence plays a pretty big role here. Like the accents and the acting... It’s a little much.
But I don’t care. Because... It’s worth it. Because the story is worth telling. It’s not even really prescribing a solution, it just wants to make you aware of the problem. Maybe it will cause you to reflect on *that moment* in your own life. Maybe considering that moment will help you prepare to deal with it in the future.
Because knowing is half the battle? Or keeping the safety on can be the whole battle. Well, depending on the battlefield. I do like concluding my reviews with an elite metaphor.
4/10