Movie Review: Six Years Gone
Six Years Gone is a heartrending drama from writer-director Warren Dudley, starring Veronica Jean Trickett, Sarah Priddy and Anna Griffiths. When Carrie Dawson’s daughter goes missing, her life spirals out of control in an attempt to find Lolly and make sense of the kidnapping. Turning to the police, she experiences the helplessness encountered by every parent when their child is taken. As the title suggests, Six Years Gone is more focused on the aftermath of a child abduction, its repercussions on a mother and how a proud parent struggles to overcome the ghosts of her past.
A wonderful acting showcase for its lead, Veronica Jean Trickett takes the responsibility of representing a mother in all her seasons of grief. Apart from being a devastating loss, it’s the uncertainty of your loved one’s predicament and the lingering hope of reunion that can throw a parent in the deep end. Moving from being a concerned mother to being completely displaced by unexpected loss and ever-widening mystery, Six Years Gone gives Trickett a spectrum of emotion to work with in a delicate performance.
Being the main dramatic thrust, she rises to the occasion and delivers a striking portrait of a mother’s grief and long suffering. Burdened with her mother’s age-related challenges and unexpected financial distress, Carrie is spurred into picking up a dangerous job that connects her with the criminal underworld. Subject to the dire consequences of her unwieldy new profession, Dawson uses her setback to dig deeper into the trafficking ring to get closer to the truth about Lolly.
Six Years Gone has shades of Taken with a few thematic parallels but as a dramatic portrait it’s not as concerned with blistering action, spy craft or ratcheting up suspense. Liam Neeson cast himself into the criminal underground using his special set of skills to rack up a good body count and make the bad guys wish they had never met him. This drama finds a woman infiltrating a trafficking operation but it takes a much more grounded and emotional standpoint. Watching a desperate mother clinging onto her own life only to find renewed purpose at the bottom of the barrel is stirring and where this drama finds its slow-boiling power.
“I can feel it… she’s out there.”
Dudley has considerable limitations when it comes to budget and manages his resources well in translating his script to screen. A modest production, the undercurrent of docudrama and gritty realism compels this heartbreaking story. Leveraging the gut punch that is every parent’s worst nightmare, Dudley crafts a wistful film on the back of committed performances. Instead of spelling everything out, he uses the negative space to tap into people’s imaginations by way of sound and illusion.
Six Years Gone is an emotionally powerful story that could have tipped into melodrama, yet it’s subtle and restrained enough to skirt this tendency. Going for raw and authentic drama, the film’s pacing is deliberately slower to try and sink into Carrie’s predicament. Some scenes do feel a bit stretched and as a pensive dramatic portrait Six Years Gone could have been more intimate as a character study.
Keeping the screenplay quite light and at arm’s length, Dudley leans on his actors in this female-led drama, touching on timely themes around parent-child kinship, gender-based violence and child trafficking. This gives Six Years Gone its edge, challenging in vicariously going through the bowels of hell yet not gratuitous in effecting this emotionally-wrought journey.
It’s an admirable and even remarkable achievement for the experienced filmmaker, who has composed a slow-burning crime drama on a micro budget of just $18,000. Swathing the drama in powerful themes, Dudley has proven what he can do with little and one can only hope that this award-winning feature serves as a springboard into attracting more faith and finance for his forthcoming creative projects. Aiming for something real and of substance, Dudley and Trickett have both shown up to create a small yet substantial human drama.
The bottom line: Gritty