Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS   ***

Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross

2020

IDEA:  On the last day of business, employees and regular customers gather to celebrate and mourn their beloved Las Vegas bar.

BLURB:  A hybrid docu-fictional social experiment, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets gathers a group of barflies on the closing day of a Vegas dive bar, and surveys the brew of disillusionment, uncertainty, regret, and brittle fortitude that arises from their interactions. Embodying the viscously sozzled atmosphere, the camera bobs and drifts in a pink neon haze, catching a dozen micro-dramas unfolding in an impression of woozy realtime. The profiles of the patrons deepen and expand as more file in: older grizzled alcoholics are joined by millennials, exposing both generational rifts and connections as everyone - seemingly longtime acquaintances - unite around a shared outsiderness in their boozy makeshift oasis. But the Ross brothers are sneaky. The bar is not, in fact, closing, nor is it located in Vegas. For the most part, the patrons don’t actually know each other; they are strangers who all frequent different watering holes. Rather than sully the verisimilitude of the film, this extra-textual knowledge actually enhances it, underscoring the fact that the tensions and camaraderie of the group are not endemic to particular people, but inhere in the dynamics of the film’s chosen, and very much constructed, social environment. Although the Ross brothers perhaps invest too much trust in their improvisatory conceit - dramatic interest can lag even in the film’s relatively brief duration - Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a unique and effective evocation of a distinctly modern American mood. One gets the sense that its dispossessed, empathetically understood subjects could come from anywhere in the country, and they would still find commiseration in the bar, a microcosm of a nation’s communities roaring and grieving while hanging by a thread.