A desperate cop on the edge is obsessed over the fact that his beautiful but desperate wife is having an affair. At the same time, he tracks a desperately shrewd bank robber who is falling in love with a desperately obsessed woman whose life he just saved from suicide. As if that’s not enough, he is also being blackmailed by two desperately unhinged street criminals who will stop at nothing to get their money. Time is running out for all of them as their worlds collide in in this intensely unique and desperately compelling and unpredictable thriller!

ACTS OF DESPERATION starts at the end. Or to better say, what looks like the end. We then jump back a few days to see how the opening scene came to be. We then meet grumpy and all around jerk cop Grillo (Jason Gedrick) and his photographer Wife, Faith (Neraida Bega). What starts as a normal morning conversation morphs into vailed accusations as we learn that he thinks she is having an affair. We then jump to two dim-witted friends Stu and Floyd (Chris Coppola and Vince Lozano). Their day consists of smoking weed and figuring out wants going on in their lives. This leads them to a local diner to eat pancakes and what follows is what I can only assume is meant to be humorous but only comes of awkward and eye-rolling. At the same time we meet Glenn (Treva Etienne) in a very bad disguise. After another eye-rolling seen that took far too long, Glenn robs a bank in possibly the most relaxed and nonchalant bank robbery ever put to film. After he casually walks out of said bank, Glenn meets Morgan (Kira Reed Lorsch) who happens to be standing on the edge of a bridge and contemplating jumping. Glenn is able to talk her down and the seeds are planted of something more.

With so many characters to follow, a lot is thrown at you. And with this, the first of the larger issues come into play. The cuts and transitions between scenes can be very sudden and jarring. It can be to the point of confusion. It’s clear that they want to tell as much story as possible, the above paragraph is only the first twenty-five minutes of a nearly two-hour movie. The problem stems from the fact that there are entire parts that don’t seem to have a reason to belong so it just comes off as bloated. It feels like a good twenty minutes or so could have been cut and the film would have been better for it.

The second issue which is also the more major of the two since it can’t just be edited away is the script. To put it bluntly, a vast majority of the characters are just so badly written that you just don’t care what happens. The worst offender is Grillo, not only is he an angry cop that crosses the line of what people would allow (attacking witnesses, threatening people, destroying property) but he’s just not a good person. His wife is a step above simply because she’s given less screen time though at one point we’re supposed to believe that as someone who is actively cheating on her husband she would use her real name on said cheating site but also it would be the first result that comes up when googling her name. Then there is Stu and Floyd, two small-time crooks that are so stupid that they had to google how to extort someone. It’s like they were supposed to be comic relief but they were written so poorly that it just comes of groan-inducing and annoying.

Glenn is the standard thief with a heart of gold and Morgan is a woman who jumps head first into anyone that shows her attention. One bright side to the characters is the chemistry and over all feel of Glenn and Morgan. It starts kind of odd but they start to develop a friendship that feels organic. All this adds up to a finale that somehow manages to feel rushed and depending on how invested you are in the outcome, it can either be satisfying or you just don’t care what happens anymore. I was unfortunately the latter. The good performances of the actors couldn’t overcome the poor characters and bad script and the natural chemistry of Kira and Treva couldn’t carry the film over the bloated run time and odd choices in editing.