Canopy (2013) Khan Chittenden, Morning Tzu-Yi Mo, Robert Menzies, Edwina Wren Movie Review

Canopy (2013)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Khan Chittenden in Canopy (2013)

In the Singapore Woods

It's the 9th February 1942 and Australian fighter pilot Jim (Khan Chittenden) wakes up entangled in his parachute canopy suspended from a tree in a forest somewhere in Singapore. With the noises of war not too far away and just the jungle noises nearby Jim lowers himself to the forest floor where he tries to make sense of his situation. As he tries to make it out of the thick forestation in the hope of finding safety he meets Seng (Mo Tzu-Yi) a Chinese resistance fighter except with no common language making each other understood is no easy task.

As of writing it looks to me that writer/director Aaron Wilson has written a few shorts and directed a few shorts but "Canopy" is his only full length movie and as such you kind of have to be impressed because it must take some bravery to deliver a movie with limited characters and limited dialogue especially when it is your debut piece. And in fairness Wilson delivers a well made movie; the locations are good, the effects are also okay with great use of a jungle soundtrack to give atmosphere and various things which happen in "Canopy" do grab your attention with Wilson using the dark of Night effectively. In fact the cinematography as a whole is surprisingly effective and not the weak sort of cinematography with fuzzy images you usually get from a debut movie.

The trouble is that whilst "Canopy" occasionally delivers a scene which is tense and attention grabbing for the most it isn't and sadly watching Jim sneak through the vegetation and try to communicate with Seng is not overly enthralling. I will be blunt and say at times "Canopy" is mind numbingly tedious and I actually think that at most this should have been an hour long drama, not one which at 84 minutes feels drawn out.

What this all boils down to is that as a whole "Canopy" didn't work for me and is definitely not something I would choose to watch again. But what it achieves is to highlight Aaron Wilson who can deliver a decent looking drama as a director.


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