Malik Bader’s gritty indie crime thriller Cash Only is hitting cinemas and VOD in the U.S. on May 13th through FilmBuff. ScreenAnarchy has your first look at the trailer for the flick which you will find below.
Elvis Martini is in deep shit. His dilapidated Detroit apartment building is about to be foreclosed on by the bank, most of his tenants are behind on rent, and he’s in big debt to bookies in the dangerous Albanian underworld. The only light in his dark world is his nine-year-old daughter, Lena; he’s in debt to her school, too. Elvis finds some ill-gotten cash in an evicted tenant’s apartment and is able to briefly keeps the wolves at bay, but he soon learns that the money belonged to an even bigger wolf – one that wants his stolen money back.
When Lena is kidnapped by the mysterious menace he’s accidentally messed with, Elvis has 24 hours to come up with $25,000 to save his daughter's life: cash only.
Cash Only was a favorite film of the ScreenAnarchy crew when it rolled out at Fantasia last Summer, making an immediate and lasting impression on writer Kurt Halfyard.
Not since Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher has a low level criminal gotten himself in over his head in such short order. And like that gritty mid-1990s Copenhagen street film, things crackle and hum with energy born of desperation and pure survival instinct. Couple that with the spectacularly crumbling 21st century Detroit setting and the American-Albanian subculture sitting in the middle of it and you have, at least in cinematic terms, a quite an opportunity. Far more than mere homage director Malik Bader (Street Thief) and writer-star Nikola Shreli inject an emotional vulnerability to Elvis that offers an extra ply of resonance. His world, as ugly and low-rent as it often is, sticks with you long after the inevitable plotting fireworks pay off.
High praise indeed when your film is compared to the work of the famed Danish director. And well deserved to. Check out the trailer below and look for a clip from the film, right here at ScreenAnarchy shortly before the film is in cinemas on VOD on May 13th