THE PIGEON EGG STRATEGY

“Are you trying to pull some abstract, surrealistic, metaphorical maneuver on me?” asks the drunken English-speaking German-born Italian-looking Chinese-employed hit man. At one time or another we've all wanted to say something like that. Now we can, thanks to Max Makowski's adeptly absurd, intellectual, international dark comedy. A cryptic phone call from a Rio de Janeiro lawyer instigates a strange chain of events on the other side of the world, involving seven identically-attired gunmen, a controversial children's-book author and a grammarian involved in high-level government operations to transform Hong Kong's official language to American English, instead of, um, English English. Wordplay is at the heart of THE PIGEON EGG STRATEGY; characters match wits in verbal dynamics and metaphors cause lethal mix-ups. With scant publicity or studio backing, THE PIGEON EGG STRATEGY was an instant cult hit this year at Sundance, where one theater created its own Grand Prize out of thin air, just to award it something. Maybe we will too.