As a minimalist, ultra low-budget (then again, if my friends and I made this with the budget listed here, we may well have had $3.4 million left in the kitty for our next flick), virtually one-room set film, THE BETRAYED sort of commands attention for its 98-minute running time. If its stated setting was Burnaby, British Columbia, the viewer could think: "Oh yeah, these keystone crooks are kind of plausible in a region where the populace evidently is NOT aware that their national guard won independence 141 years earlier, since they haven't updated a name that specifically denotes their ancestors' colonial masters from centuries earlier. Let's give these confused Britons and Colombians the benefit of the doubt, and rate this tale from backwards Burnaby at 7 of 10, since having all the main characters behaving as clueless dolts would not pass the suspension-of-disbelief test for Philadelphia--or Peoria, but who really knows if or when the 21st Century level of civilization will reach Burnaby."
However, with their understandably massive inferiority complex, the Canadian filmmakers have once again chosen for about the millionth time to try to foist off the doings of unsophisticated blunderers as actions which become totally incredible for mobsters, computer science majors, and police officers who are products of American public schools. Ten people are shot to death during THE BETRAYED, with the title no doubt meant to refer to how each one submits to his death like a sheep going to slaughter--even the character who has already gunned down two cops and six fellow mobsters. If you asked them WHY they were so blind-sided, their only possible reply would be, "because the script betrayed me." If you watch BLOOD SIMPLE or FARGO by the Coen brothers, you will see that master filmmakers leave themselves an out when there is lots of misguided mayhem, by portraying their characters as hicks operating in the boondocks. Conversely, Coppola would not make a savvy urban mob boss (think Marlon Brando in GODFATHER) stare into an underling's revolver for half a minute, doing some sort of internal Hamlet "to be, or not to be" monologue, when they could save themselves by just pulling their own trigger! Sure, Philadelphia had Rocky, but even Cousin Paulie could have gotten the drop on these Burnaby bums.
However, with their understandably massive inferiority complex, the Canadian filmmakers have once again chosen for about the millionth time to try to foist off the doings of unsophisticated blunderers as actions which become totally incredible for mobsters, computer science majors, and police officers who are products of American public schools. Ten people are shot to death during THE BETRAYED, with the title no doubt meant to refer to how each one submits to his death like a sheep going to slaughter--even the character who has already gunned down two cops and six fellow mobsters. If you asked them WHY they were so blind-sided, their only possible reply would be, "because the script betrayed me." If you watch BLOOD SIMPLE or FARGO by the Coen brothers, you will see that master filmmakers leave themselves an out when there is lots of misguided mayhem, by portraying their characters as hicks operating in the boondocks. Conversely, Coppola would not make a savvy urban mob boss (think Marlon Brando in GODFATHER) stare into an underling's revolver for half a minute, doing some sort of internal Hamlet "to be, or not to be" monologue, when they could save themselves by just pulling their own trigger! Sure, Philadelphia had Rocky, but even Cousin Paulie could have gotten the drop on these Burnaby bums.