The Throwaways (2015)

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2022) The rise of new streaming platforms and their original content leads to interesting questions, and the one that fascinates me as a budding movie historian is whether that content will survive any eventual demise of those platforms. This is no longer a theoretical concern, as streaming platforms are shutting down. The Throwaways got some minor notoriety back in 2015 for being the first original film for the now-gone Sony-exclusive platform Crackle. Crackle folded in Canada in 2018 (and changed owners the following year), meaning that The Throwaway then began an interesting post-exclusive career. You can now watch the film on five different platforms, and you can even catch it on regular TV channels in French translation. So that answers part of the question: As long as there will be libraries and content providers, there’s a chance that content will simply jump to another platform as another item in the listings. But what about the film? Well, The Throwaways, fitting enough, is meant to be a quick and cheap piece of entertainment. The limits of the budget clearly show despite some effective East-European production values, and it doesn’t take much more than the credit sequence to realize that we’re in sub-studio territory, closer to straight-to-cable cheapness than anything else. The special effects are rough, the staging is rudimentary, the scenes are arranged for maximal value-for-money and the cast includes James Caan as a marquee name more than a substantial character. And yet… the result isn’t as bad as it could have been. A rather clever script does well at maximizing the production elements at its disposal, and has half-decent dialogue, characterization and situations. An advantage of shooting in eastern Europe is that there are plenty of grandiose, vaguely run-down locations to choose from. Why have a briefing in a small meeting room when you can have it in a vast auditorium? Why settle for a small warehouse when you can shoot in a gigantic warehouse? The level of the script is a clear notch above similar films—Despite some awkwardness here and there, it’s generally interesting to listen to, and the film does the bare minimum in presenting a plot with some narrative momentum. The Throwaways is, to be clear, not a good film—but it’s a pleasant surprise that punches above its weight, clearly highlighting what clever screenwriting can do without a big budget. While the result feels like a pilot for an extended series, it wraps things up satisfyingly, and it’s hard to ask for much more. Now, I wonder how long I’ll be waiting to see a Netflix original pop up on French Canadian television…