THE STORY – Two strangers show up at the same Brooklyn apartment to collect cash they’re both owed. Forced to spend the day together on a journey through New York City, the pair reveal intimate details about their lives, although one of them happens to be hiding a harrowing secret.
THE CAST – Mary Neely, Kareem Rahma, Brandon Wardell & David Zayas
THE TEAM – Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder (Director), Mary Neely & Kareem Rahma (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 80 Minutes
It’s a scene that’s been a staple of acting and screenwriting classes for decades now. The premise? Strangers encounter one another and find themselves forced to spend some time together. After the usual resistance to each other, their emotional walls are broken down, and they find themselves discovering truths about themselves that the other person brought out in them. Then they part, perhaps never to see one another again (Or not).
It should be a surefire setup for success, but so often we have seen variations on this theme that have been botched, either by underwhelming writing or by actors who have little or no chemistry together. Fortunately, this is not the case with the new American indie “Or Something,” which has a script and leading performances by Mary Neely and Kareem Rahma that bring wit and perception to the template, which the film follows to a T. That is, until it doesn’t.
Olivia (Nelly) is strapped for cash and so desperate for funds that she’s selling her clothes to a local thrift store. En route to the apartment of an acquaintance who owes her money, she feels threatened by a man named Amir (Rahma) following her every step, only to learn that he’s heading to the same apartment for the same reason. Olivia and Amir descend on the weasely Teddy (Brandon Wardell), who claims that the man who actually has their money is the legendary underworld figure Uptown Mike, and that, if they want their share, they have to travel to Harlem to claim it. The problem is that Mike won’t be home for another few hours, forcing Olivia and Amir to stay together until that time if they want to get their cash.
It’s how the pair handles its time together that makes up the gist of “Or Something.” In the best indie spirit, director Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder takes to the New York streets to film the story, whether in Teddy’s cramped studio in Lower Manhattan or Mike’s front steps in Harlem. As they talk, Olivia and Amir kill time in the places you might expect — the subway ride uptown, lunch at a diner, and a long walk through Central Park. The talk between them comes slowly at first, but as trust slowly builds, viewpoints begin to be expressed at a furious clip.
Olivia has the highest emotional walls to be overcome. From initially being threatened by Amir’s mere presence, she explains unprompted that she’s not interested in sleeping with him. Every attempt by a confused Amir to find some way to connect with her is rebuffed with a boilerplate response that all men want to do is sleep with an attractive woman. When he notes that he doesn’t find her attractive, she is thrown. It’s in that moment that Neely brings Olivia alive, clearly suggesting that she has been so damaged in her past that any letting down her guard will only lead to more intense heartbreak later on.
Amir, for his part, has his own troubles. He is constantly being interrupted by phone calls from his mother, asking if he’s gotten his money yet for an unspecified reason (He later admits that it’s to bail out his habitually-incarcerated screw-up of a brother). Rahma is particularly adept at showing Amir’s respect for women without signifying weakness, an approach that baffles Olivia. She claims that she wants a man who loves her for her intelligence, but when presented with one in Amir, she hesitates, not wanting to be hurt again.
Though perhaps inspired by Richard Linklater’s “Before…” series – the gold standard for walk-and-talk romances – Neely and Rahma’s screenplay takes a different tack, seeking to explore just how people from different cultures can overcome those emotional barriers to find closeness. Comedy partners since 2021, Rahma and Neely are attuned to each other’s rhythms, both as writers and performers, and the ease they have working with each other (even when their characters are in conflict) creates a chemistry that you can’t buy. They know these characters well and reveal them to us with ease.
Using the streets of New York as a backdrop, Schroeder filmed “Or Something” in only six days with an ultra low budget, using guerilla-style filming techniques that are reminiscent of similar NY-based indies from the 1970s. His skills carry over to his cast, with Wardell in particular delivering a wonderfully squirrely Teddy. Of special note is David Zayas, who, as Uptown Mike, has created a thug with a baseball bat who can still melt at the thought of his cat and a character far from that of his supportive husband on “The Bear.”
Still, if a film follows that familiar template of strangers finding closeness, the problem for audiences may be its very familiarity. We’ve seen all of these beats before in other films, and as we recognize Olivia and Amir following the same trajectory, the audience knows where this is going and is 10 steps ahead of the characters. So even with a runtime of only 80 minutes, there’s an urge to get to where we all know it’s winding up. Or at least we think we do. At the very last moment — the final 5 minutes in fact — the film throws in an unexpected twist that makes you question all that was revealed before. It’s a shocker of a Hail Mary pass, but it works, as you think back on the hints dropped by that particular character. At the very least, it will prompt a whole lot of conversation as you’re leaving the theater.
