Stickmen

Playing the Shots. Covering the Angles. Waiting for the Big Break.

Stickmen, New Zealand, 2001

Director: Hamish Rothwell 
Production co: Stick Films
Executive producers: Chris Brown, Katherine Butler, Robin Laing
Producer: Michelle Turner
Script: Nick Ward  
Cinematography: Nigel Bluck
Editing: Owen Ferrier-Kerr
Production design: Neville Stevenson
Original music: House of Downtown 

With: Robbie Magasiva (Jack), Scott Wills (Wayne), Paolo Rotondo (Thomas), Anne Nordhaus (Sara), Luanne Gordon (Lulu), Simone Kessell (Karen), John Leigh (Dave), Enrico Mammarella (Daddy), Emma Nooyen (Tess), Mick Rose (Man in Black), Kirk Torrance (Holden)

35mm, 94 minutes, R16–contains violence, offensive language and sex scenes

Watch the Stickmen trailer (2MB 1:33 min)

2001 Nokia New Zealand Film Awards: Best director (Hamish Rothwell), Best actor (Scott Wills), Best supporting actress (Luanne Gordon), Best screenplay (Nick Ward)

Playing the Shots. Covering the Angles. Waiting for the Big Break.

“You can’t really lose with a pool movie. The game is so inherently dramatic and the milieu in which it is generally perpetrated is glowingly seedy, full of smoke, drunkenness, cleavage and all that other glorious noir stuff that the camera lens seems to slavishly adore.” — Southern Skies, December 2000/January 2001

“Its beginning – apparently pool is not only better than sex, it’s an allegory for it – makes you fear for the next hour and a half. Along the way, Stickmen’s caper plot about three mates entering an underground pool tournament to save their debt-ridden local pub does require quite a suspension of disbelief, and not just because the contest is presided over by a Greek Godfather with no hands, named Daddy, who operates out of a Wellington back-alley barbershop and employs a small squad of heavies led by the movie’s occasional philosophizing narrator Holden. But once it gets its eye in, Stickmen is away laughing. It’s comedy as broad as it is blokey and matched by a visual style. And though that style does show its creators’ advertising background, it gives the film a crackling after-dark energy. Fortunately, that’s matched by a healthy count of spot-on punchlines delivered as part of some uniformly assured performances of its leading characters. It engages, it entertains, and even if its eight-ball underworld has been stylistically heightened, there’s much to recognize in the characters and male foibles of mates Jack, Wayne and Thomas. And the women who almost come between them – Karen and Sarah – do much more than perform merely decorative duties. It does occasionally fall back on twenty-something movie formula and some urges towards sketch comedy and caricature, but some the latter prove priceless all the same. With a soundtrack that feeds neatly off the abundant energy in New Zealand music at the moment, this feels as much of a rock’n’roll movie as a pool one. No, it might not have much depth beyond its carefully-lit green-felt surface, but the debut feature of director Rothwell and writer Nick Ward is game enough to try to make big bolshie entertainment out of its seemingly modest elements and succeeds in that aim. Stickmen is vital, refreshing and sure plays a mean pool ball.” — Russell Baillie, NZ Herald, 20 January 2001

“Stickmen? A double entendre? Yes – and a blatant exploitation that works well. Jack, Wayne and Thomas are mates – three distinctive and entirely different characters, united by a common passion: playing pool. (In their case it’s more fun that you can have with your clothes off – which comes a close second.) Playing pool is also one of life’s great joys to Dave. Struggling to keep the run-down Wellington bar where the ‘stickmen’ hang, drink heaps and shoot pool, afloat, Dave risks everything and enters them in a knock-out pool tournament run by a Greek gangster known as ‘Daddy’, a man with a few passions of his own – winning and scaring the crap out of people for starters. After meeting Daddy, Jack gets the boys in deeper, Thomas falls in love with Sarah and Wayne looks to be getting it on with first one, then the other, of two prostitutes. Beating some bizarre characters – including the mysterious ‘Men in Black’ – and suffering some dirty tricks along the way, the trio reach the semi-finals, along with the ‘Bankers’, the ‘Farmers’ and the ‘Bastinados’. Sarah and Karen, who have their own devious agenda, still have surprises to spring. Although every character is a stereotype, the script holds up (bars like Dave’s really are full of stereotypes) and Stickmen’s faults are few: zappy sci-fi title effects, while well executed, are a distraction; several recycled jokes that weren’t funny first time around; overplayed Freudian images; and a couple of blips in the script strain credibility. But these faults are minor, easily forgiven and don’t detract too much from 97 minutes of good ‘blokey’ movie.” — Veronica McLaughlin, Real Groove, Jan/Feb 2001

“Stickmen was directed by Hamish Rothwell and written by Nick Ward, both of whom have a background in advertising. It is fast, slick and frequently funy – like a lot of ads, in fact. Chapter headings and to-camera addresses punctuate the action, and there are plenty of throwaway sicko gags. There’s a dash of Tarantino, a dollop of Cockney lowlife farces like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and quite a bit of The Color of Money in the tabletop pool action. Its relationship with any existing New Zealand reality is quite coincidental. To put it another way, this may be New Zealand’s first genre movie for the current 20-somethings. On that level, it’s a roaring success. Hamish Rothwell’s winning of the young New Zealand director award was fully deserved.” — Nicholas Reid, North & South, February 2001

Screenings: Stickmen screened on 26 June 2008 in the Admissions season; and on 7 June 2006 in a season selected by film maker and x-Archive staff member Rupert Reynolds-McLean.