MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Rhythm Thief’ a Survival Tale With Raw Drive and Energy

Wedged between a thicket of year-end prestige pictures, Matthew Harrison’s “Rhythm Thief,” a triumph of economy in all senses, pops up to deliver a knockout punch. Harrison yanks us right down to the mean streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where Simon (Jason Andrews) and most everyone he comes in contact with is living the most marginal of existences.

Simon survives by selling bootleg music cassettes on the streets. He’s a compact, virile young man, self-possessed and self-reliant. He’s also a man of his word, tough and resilient, and he exudes an inner strength, a cool self-discipline that makes him a magnet for the desperate and the outright demented.

He’s always fending off a hyper kid (Kevin Corrigan) who wants to be his pal and his partner. A woman (Kimberly Flynn) drops by his stark, dingy tenement apartment regularly for “sex and nothing else,” but gets hysterical when he flatly insists she live up to these terms which, he reminds her, are her own.

Simon clearly has decided that survival depends upon abiding by his own code and by maintaining a detachment from others. He is really only open, if you can call it that, with a philosophical older neighborhood man (Mark Alfred), who appreciates his intelligence and integrity and wishes Simon would do more with his life.

Out of the blue a waiflike young woman, Marty (Eddie Daniels), from his past turns up to tell him that his mother, who had been a mental patient, has died. Simon reflexively rebuffs Marty, a dreamy type who loves to write on walls (and on her arms too), but she persists. A series of events propel Simon and Marty to Far Rockaway Beach, where he at last feels able to reveal his vulnerability and capacity for tenderness.

In telling Simon’s story, Harrison has been aided by an exceedingly vital and fluid cameraman, Howard Krupa, who shot in black and white. In expressing Simon’s concern that his life means nothing, Harrison reveals a style that is at once as rigorously minimalist as Simon himself yet exudes the raw drive and energy of the film’s extraordinarily intense and captivating score by Danny Brenner, Hugh O’Donovan, John L. Horn and Kevin Okerlund.

Andrews is an actor of admirable reserves and concentration, and he’s supported by actors as capable as he is. Often funny in its sense of absurdity and finally wrenching, “Rhythm Thief”--which reportedly cost only $11,000 to make--exudes a sense of life being lived on the edge.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some scenes of violence, blunt language and an overall bleakness too strong for children.

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‘Rhythm Thief’

Jason Andrews: Simon

Eddie Daniels: Marty

Kevin Corrigan: Fuller

Kimberly Flynn: Cyd

A Strand Releasing presentation of a Film Four/Film Crash production. Writer-executive producer-director-editor Matthew Harrison. Producer Jonathan Starch. Cinematographer Howard Krupa. Costumes Nina Carter. Music Danny Brenner, Hugh O’Donovan, John L. Horn, Kevin Okerlund. Art director Daniel Fisher. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500.