I’m watching my way through Dustin Wayde Mills’ oeuvre this year, and I will say that RIP: Rest in Pieces has a more traditional plot shape than your usual DWM movie.
A mook is on the run from the cops. He stashes a satchel, and then something bad happens to him. So bad we don’t even see it. The mook survives just long enough to tell his boss that the satchel’s been stashed in the old school, but not any more detail than that. Unfortunately, the old school has a bad reputation, and as the boss notes, the mook “didn’t beat himself to death.”
The boss has several people who owe him favors, however, and he dispatches these five people (three women and two men) to find his satchel. If they return with it, all debts are forgiven.
Much violence ensues.
RIP is in black and white, and DWM has some nice composition and use of shadow throughout the movie. I don’t really miss the color. We’ve all seen enough black and white movies to recognize the shade of blood, especially when it’s coming out of someone’s head or dripping from a ripped-off limb.
My favorite moment in the movie is when one of the women is identified as The Princess of Perrysburg, the preferred madam of the local criminals because her girls are clean, not like those floozies from Toledo.
There are definitely times when the movie is trying a bit too hard with its dialogue. When it works, it works.
Client: “Are you leaving?”
Cleaner: “The hard part’s done now.”
Client: “What am I supposed to do?”
Cleaner: “Stop. Killing. Women.”
And when it doesn’t work, it’s just trying.
Woman: “Eat shit!”
Man: “I would … just to see where it comes from.”