This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.
The New Hollywood era of the late-60s to early-80s (depending on who you ask) is still seeing the fruit of its efforts today. Characterised by a shift away from the traditional American style of cinema, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma all took an artistic lead from European influences instead – leading to an artistic process that was more innovative with fewer rules. It's no wonder that a boom in independent filmmaking in the '90s followed its lead and built upon it. Without New Hollywood, we'd probably never have seen the likes of Quentin Tarantino and The Coen Brothers break through the glass ceiling into mainstream audiences from an independent standing start. In the modern day, those are the filmmakers who are inspiring new artists to do as much as they can without a wealth of resources, and The Burghart Brothers' debut feature, Head Count, is a film that encourages us to recognise where it's been to end up here.
Set in Kansas, Head Count tells the story of Kat, played by Aaron Jakubenko. He's on the run, and he's just woken up with a revolver pointing at his head. What's weird, though, is that it's his revolver. For his own survival, he needs to work out how he got there, and how many bullets the gun has left in it. As he works it out, we see the past in an anthology-like format with each bullet being accounted for by a different yet interconnected story. Kat's future is directly influenced by his recent past, and we're invited to figure out his chances of survival with him.
The Burghart Brothers have described Head Count as Blood Simple meets Memento, and it's quite clear to see why. There are elements of neo-noir and crime pulp which could have been lifted straight out of an early Coen brother's film, while the narrative creates a puzzle that we're invited to solve in the same way that Christopher Nolan loves to. It feels reductive to cite just those two, though. Head Count almost presents a smorgasbord of references and influences from independent ‘80s and ‘90s cinema, in the same way that that era tended to present the same from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Regardless of any of that, the element of Head Count that makes it so watchable is that, again, like its influences, it only exists because somebody wanted it to. The Burghart Brothers have essentially willed this into production nine years after its proof of concept short film counterpart was released, and they've made quite a big film out of it with a modest budget. To counteract its budgetary constraints there's a lot of interesting camerawork and stylistic editing – two elements that don't cost anything except human talent, of which there is a lot on show.
Head Count feels equally as nostalgic as it does brand new. It wears its influences on its sleeve to the point that it becomes a celebration of what came before it, which also juxtaposes the narrative of Kat anxiously recalling what came before the moment that we're dropped into the story. Not bad for a swift 80 minutes.
Head Count is released on the 29th of September
