The Pigeon Egg Strategy

Max Makowski
USA/Hong Kong, 1997, 84 mins.

Director of Photography: Gavin Liew
Principal cast: Anthony DiMaria, Anthony Grasso, Rachel Jacobs, Charles Sammarco, Daniel Milder, Anthony Michael Jones.

A group of assassins in bowler hats are trying to knock off a children's storybook writer because the characters in her latest story resemble their gang. This is the bare-bones description of Max Makowski's absurdist philosophical thriller which takes great delight in playing around with the conventions of storytelling and linear time. With its bizarre humor, inventive dialogue, and striking black-and-white photography, The Pigeon Egg Strategy is a perfect candidate for cult status. if there is an odd flavor to this purposely eccentric experience, it is only fitting ' the movie was "filmed in fifteen days in Hong Kong, with American actors, by a Brazilian director, and an English script that was written in Germany." With its time-hopping crime story and its delight in extremely talkative characters, The Pigeon Egg Strate feels something like a Quentin Tarantino film as imagined by Samuel Beckett. - David Schwartz