You’ve seen this movie before: Average Human comes in contact with gamma rays/an extraterrestrial substance/a classified Cold War-era experiment gone awry, and develops superpowers.
Average Human – after learning to control his or her new abilities, as well as enduring a brief but dramatic existential crisis – resolves to use this new superpower to fight crime and save humanity, because (cue a string-heavy score), “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Roll credits; sell action figures; green-light sequels; print money.
It’s a form of superhero story that does ridiculously well at the box office, but it’s also a bit limp. There are only so many ways to tell this story, and we’ve seen and heard them all before.
Which is why Patterson's Wager – in which Fred Ewanuick (Corner Gas) stars as Charles, an insurance adjuster who can sometimes see two minutes into the future – is so refreshing.
Charles’ superpower doesn’t do him (or humanity) much good. He can’t control it, and what he’s able to see isn’t particularly revelatory.
It all seems so random, much like real life, which makes Patterson’s Wager – the feature film directorial debut from Vancouver’s O. Corbin Saleken that has its BC premiere as part of the 2015 Whistler Film Festival – far more satisfying than most of the other superhero flicks screening today.
“We’ve seen all of those other movies, and I didn’t want to add some artificial espionage plot, or some murder mystery or anything like that, because those aren’t things that most people encounter,” says Saleken in a recent phone chat.
“I like to take a fantastical element but put it in an otherwise normal everyday setting and just see how people would react.”
Adding to that sense of the everyday is the fact that the movie (which filmed over 12 days in the summer of 2013) utilized 19 Metro Vancouver locations.
“I wanted it to be set in the places that I see when I drive around Vancouver, be it Spanish Banks at night, or Jolly’s Indian Bistro,” says Saleken.
Reel People is a spoiler-free zone, but we’ll cautiously reveal that, at the very moment that Charles realizes he can see two minutes into the future, he’s preparing to propose to his girlfriend, Audrey (portrayed by prolific Vancouver actress Chelah Horsdal, who can currently be seen in Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle).
There’s also a parallel story with a paranormal twist set in 1980s Vancouver, featuring actors Alex Zahara, Garry Chalk, and Michelle Creber.
Saleken attributes much of the success of this film – already a favourite on the festival circuit – to casting.
“I’m a strong believer that casting is pretty much everything in a film,” says Saleken. “The easiest way for me to cast is try to find an element of the character’s personality in the actor.”
With Ewanuick, “[he] has this great, likeable, everyman quality, and he just seemed perfect as a guy who’s befuddled about dealing with this thing that’s going on with him.”
• Patterson’s Wager will screen at the 2015 Whistler Film Festival next month, which runs Dec. 2-6 at venues around the village. If you’re unable to make the trek to Whistler for the fest, watch this space: Patterson’s Wager will screen in Vancouver in spring 2016.
