Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets: NZIFF Review

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is an exercise in freewheeling filmmaking that will, in all honesty, test the boundaries of your patience.

Give in to its rhythms, and this tale of the final night of the Roaring 20s, a Las Vegas divebar may fully be your jam. 

But in truth, the ramshackle nature of the documentary finds no truck with this reviewer, making most of what "happens" in Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV's piece an exercise in endurance, akin to 2011's Whores Glory.

As the camera captures the bar's patrons at the very start of the day after a heavy night before, leading to its closure, the doors open and close, people come and go, and booze-soaked arguments and opinions are espoused in perpetuity thanks to the close capture of the camera.

While the Ross' camera work does much to capture the triviality of life in a bar, it also does a great deal to showcase the burgeoning camaraderie and the reasons why hangouts still are so vitally important.

The banal conversations largely pepper proceedings, and as the bittersweet end approaches, there's something akin to poignancy as the clientele ponder what's next. But it's such a hard road to even get to that stage, that Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets feels like its loose approach is its own worst enemy.

There's little in the backgrounds of the patrons to make them fully stand out - with the exception of the old timer who's always there and the bartender - and it cripples proceedings greatly. It's not that background exposition is necessary in this, but some framework would have lent a greater emotional heft to proceedings, and granted the film a degree of emotion it desperately needs.

As it stands, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets feels like the dregs of a drink - sure, what gets consumed before is delicious, but the closer you get to the bottom of the glass, the more you realise just how shallow and pointless it all is.