The movie Syrup owes more than a little to David Fincher’s adaption of the book Fight Club.
Like Fincher, Syrup director Aram Rappaport had to take a literary cult favorite – in this case Max Barry’s novel – and bring the story to another medium. Both books/films involve dark, cynical, plots that flirt with humor and romance and the characters in both are pretty difficult to root for. While, Syrup is likely not destined to gone down in film history as beloved as Fight Club, it’s still a pretty decent adaption.
There are a handful of cameos by more famous actors (like Kirstie Alley and Rachel Dratch), but the bulk of the cast is comprised of unknowns. Shiloh Fernandez plays Scat, fresh out of college and desperate to get a job in marketing. Amber Heard plays Six, the young marketing exec Scat is trying to bed. The duo come up with rebranding their company’s latest soda as FUKK (get it?) and so begins a cut throat game of one-upmanship and gratuitous marketing.
Style-wise, Syrup borrows a lot for Fincher’s Fight Club, including the speed up, jerky camera close ups and characters turning to the camera and addressing the audience directly. With a weaker story this could come off simply as a rip off, but there is enough substance in Syrup, that it plays more like an homage.
Syrup/90 mins./Magnolia/2013
Syrup DVD Review
