I feel sometimes like every movie screener I get is for lower budget independent horror films.

And that is fine! I love horror. I watch horror more than any other genre. It’s great getting to see new horror flicks that are coming down the pike. I am always excited to see another horror movie get delivered to me.

But variety is, as they say, the spice of life, and it’s wonderful to get screeners to review for genres outside of the realm horror every now and then.

Today’s movie is one of those rare non-horror offerings, and it is called Amongst The Wolves. It is the story of a homeless man named Danny who lost everything when he accidentally burned down his house while he and his son were inside. They both survived the fire, but his wife left and took their son with her. Since then, Danny has found himself unhomed and on the fringes of society.

He soon runs into another individual living rough and avoiding his past, Will. Will has worked as a dealer for a local kingpin, but is in debt to him because Will’s mom found and flushed the drugs that Will needed to sell.

While fighting for the ability to see his son again, Danny gets drawn into Will’s life and struggles. How will he come out on the other side?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Amongst The Wolves seems to promise a John Wick-ian thrill ride of revenge action, but it turns out you only get about five to ten minutes of that, and that occurs when the movie is nearing its conclusion. The rest of the way, this is a straight-up drama about a homeless man trying to make amends for the sins of his past. It’s much more interesting stuff, for my money! Honestly, I spent a lot of the duration really caught up in the story of Danny trying to reconcile his life, and I was dreading what I thought to be the inevitable turn to an action bonanza.

Maybe I’m a sap. Maybe I’m just worn out on John Wick clone cinema. But I really did dig the vast majority of this flick for its restraint and its interest in telling the story of Danny and Will and of Danny’s fight to see more of his son. There are seeds planted everywhere of the violence to come, but Danny really does everything in his power to put off resorting to that until there is just no other choice. It was absolutely the right call from the screenwriters involved here.

+ Luke McQuillan stars as Danny, and he does a really good job playing a beaten down and subdued protagonist who is trying to keep everything together. His portrayal is very realistic. I 100% bought him as a man in the scenario in which he finds himself.

His portrayal evokes mass amounts of sympathy. As noted above, you keep waiting for the revenge action thriller to start, but that’s more from expectations, not McQuillan’s performance. He doesn’t come across as a fighting hero ready to bust out at any moment. He is a man who is beaten down by life and his own dire mistakes. He clearly wants to make things right any way he can–and he is definitely a good person–and that’s what matters most about him. Not some undercurrent of violent abilities.

– There are some unbelievable elements in play here with Danny’s life, most notably his relationship with another character, Kate, and the ending scenes and where they see him end up. Danny gets extremely lucky in some aspects of his story, and it feels almost insulting to actual homeless folks who wouldn’t have it so good.

I don’t want to spoil the ending here, so let’s focus on Danny and Kate instead. Kate is a worker at a shelter/soup kitchen for the homeless that a bloody and battered Danny meets early on. She takes something of a shine to him, and the two strike up a friendship. Fair enough, but this alliance sees her accept a date from him, allow him into her house, and give him the keys to a soon-to-be-rented property so he and Will can hide out for a week.

It’s all well above and beyond anything you would expect, and you have to wonder why she stumbles so hard into Danny’s life. Most unhomed folks don’t get the benefit of such relationships with their soup kitchen workers! It makes Danny feel “luckier” than he should, and honestly, you could write Kate out of the film and little changes. So I didn’t care for this dynamic.

– While it wasn’t a Down for ME, per se, if you watched this movie expecting an action romp, BOY are you in for a surprise. Most likely, a disappointing one. As I noted, the action here is minimal, and you REALLY have to wait for it. If you aren’t willing to sit through what is mostly a drama, you might turn this one off early.

Which, for my money, would be a shame. Because this movie is more interesting than its promise. But I can see a lot of viewers getting turned off by it.

OVERALL

I quite enjoyed Amongst The Wolves. It’s a very intriguing tale about the members of our society that we try our best to ignore or look away from. But homelessness is a real problem across the world, and it’s good to see a film focus on a character struggling with this. Danny is a quality character, and the screenplay is a solid story.