Written and directed by Orson Oblowitz
Starring Santiago Segura, Jon Sklaroff, Isidora Goreshter, Jonathan Howard and Roger Guenveur Smith
Running time: 1 hour and 23 minutes
Unrated-contains strobing lights, violence, sex, nudity, language and depictions of rape

by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

The synopsis of this one had me kinda interested, but then my schedule was getting jammed up and I was gonna pass...until I saw that this was written and directed by Orson Oblowitz. He’d written and directed The Queen of Hollywood Blvd a couple years back, which I enjoyed, and I covered it in my wrap up for the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Fest here. It had a good look and an interesting concept. So, I figured I should probably check this one out too.

The system has failed X (Santiago Segura). Whether or not that is because the system is rigged or broken may depend on your perspective. Either way, it’s clear that X never had a chance. We meet him as he is being released from prison, taking the slow bus to his sad apartment with his dilapidated box of crummy personal belongings. The only person he has in his life is his parole officer (Isidora Goreshter), and she’s sure as fuck not gonna bring any joy into his life.

X doesn’t want to end up back in prison, even though he’s spent more of his life there than out in the world, even though he knows the rules inside and the outside is a scary place to him. He’s got dreams of success and he’s willing to start at the bottom. He gets a job as a delivery driver for a Greek restaurant owned by a man named Avakian (Jon Sklaroff). Avakian’s son Danny (Jonathan Howard) is the cook, and we can tell right off that he’s kinda a shiftless bastard.

As time goes by, Avakian starts to take X under his wing. Eventually he even pays X extra to keep an eye on Danny. This is where things start to get a little difficult for X. He’s trying his best to stay on the straight and narrow, but Danny has all sorts of bullshit schemes. He’s kinda gotta go along with ‘em, though, because he wants the money, doesn’t wanna piss off Avakian aaaaaand he’s kinda starting to enjoy hanging out with Danny.

All along, X has been having occasional flashbacks to his childhood, but the more trouble he gets into with Danny, the more violent these flashes become. They start pulling jobs for a gangster known as Santos (Roger Guenveur Smith) but the jobs turn out bad and X is having a hard time dealing with the moral repercussions as well as the fear of getting caught and destroying his new goal of opening a restaurant of his own.

Shit keeps getting wild, but X pushes on and he eventually manages to open up his restaurant. I’ll tell you one thing, it’s a pretty entertaining concept he has for the place (even if it is a little dumb), but I don’t wanna give it away because that’s part of the fun. There’s a lot of twists and turns throughout that are pretty fun (and a little dumb). And the look of the movie is pretty good most of the time as well. But, for me, this just wasn’t as good as his first feature. Not that it was bad, by any means, but it just didn’t catch me the same way. I did, however, find out that he released another film in between these called Trespassers that I’d totally be willing to check out. It looks like it’s currently streaming on Hulu and is available to rent or buy on various platforms. The Five Rules of Success has some interesting ideas, some pretty good action and is visually fun to watch.

If you’re in Canada and have some free time this evening (September 1st) you can check it out via the Fantasia Film Fest. It’s playing at 9:30PM.