Trust Me Review From the Tribeca Film Festival

    First thought was "I have to see this because Agent Coulson, I mean, Clark Gregg! He directed, wrote and starred in this!" Who wouldn't want to?
    Next thought, I've seen him in a couple other things like "…Adventures of Old Christine", in addition to the Marvel franchise, so I knew he'd be pretty good in this.
    "Trust Me" had a definite gritty feel, very documentary-like that added to the reality of the situation and what was going on. Gregg is a desperate child talent agent who was a child actor himself and is eager to find his prodigal money-maker.
    Gregg wrote and played his part well, living in a motel-like apartment complex with a love interest nearby, played by Amanda Peet, and drives a run-down, beat up car from the 1980's, from the looks of it.
    The lead young actress playing his hopeful money-maker, Saxon Sharbino, was like a young Lindsey Lohan when Lindsey had a passion for acting and had some real talent in her. She really played the actress in peril stuck under her father's thumb.
    I loved all the "cameos" of famous actors like Bill Macey, Felicity Huffman, Sam Rockwell and Molly Shannon to name just a few. They played their parts brilliantly and I love all of them as actors.
    There were some rough edits in the film. Some scenes were choppier than others or more docu-style of camera work. The camera work seemed intentional but not sure about the editing. Some of it was probably due to time/length constraints of the film and some might have been intentional to also have that same docu-feel.
    I saw this twice and only after the second viewing did I really see the metamorphosis theme. Butterflies showed up a few times and then the kid with fairy wings runs by and then the ending was a major metamorphosis image.
    Not sure I liked the special effect metamorphosis that ended up being used in the end of the film as it still looked a bit ostentatious and a little overboard. But maybe that’s what Gregg was going for. There was much discussion about that in the Q&A with Gregg afterwards. He didn’t have the effect in the film until about a week before the film festival due to connections he finally realized he had making all those pesky superhero films. Just kidding about the “pesky superhero films” but not about the timing.
     One thing I kept getting confused about was how Gregg's character kept getting bloody noses. Once due to a rear-end car "accident" from Rockwell's character. But besides the purposeful bloody nose that one time, it never went anywhere -- I thought it might be that he had some terminal disease that he might die of soon and would integrate into the film. But nothing was really explained about it. So that was a slight mystery to me.
    Gregg managed to do something few films or TV does, he put the very last moment of the film into the beginning of it, in order to have what I call, a CSI-style storytelling. So now, you see the ending but are kept on the edge of your seat the whole movie wondering, "But how did that happen?!" And you definitely had that feeling during this film because it's very unexpected from the beginning of the film to what happens in the end. It first starts as a kind of dark comedy film and journeys into an even darker dramatic film. Gregg makes the transition and progression pretty seamless and smooth. Really amazing job considering how many hats he wore to make this film happen.
     And a big thanks to Clark Gregg for meeting all his fans afterwards and taking time out to take pics with us and sign our tickets.