YouTube is really stepping their game up with original movies. Their Premium service (formerly YouTube Red) once offered low-budget horror movies starring YouTube personalities. Now they're lining up award-winning actors for a serious drama.
In Viper Club, Oscar winner Susan Sarandon plays Helen, a woman whose adult son is kidnapped in Syria. With the ongoing civil war and refusal to negotiate with terrorists, the State Department offers her no help.
That's when she turns to Sam (Matt Bomer), who offers her access to an exclusive network of wealthy donors, through which she can raise the $20 million ransom and then back-channel it into Syria to get her son back. But she's putting her life and the life of everyone who helps her at risk, since they'd still be giving money to terrorists. Faced with impossible choices, Helen will have to decide if this is the only way to save her son, or if she'll take more drastic action.
Directed by Maryam Keshavarz (the Iranian coming-of-age drama Circumstance), the film will have a limited release on October 26 and hit YouTube the same day.
About Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about.
I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague.
Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work.
In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo.
I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.
