CHARLIE TANGO was written, directed and produced Simon Boisvert. The film stars popular Canadian actors David La Haye and Bruce Disnmore, and Stacie Mistysyn (Degrassi High). The original music was done by Oliver Palotai, keyboardist for the band Kamelot.

CHARLIE TANGO was first runner up, Best Foreign Film at the 2024 Myrtle Beach International Film Festival. Gravitas Ventures will release the film on digital platforms on September 3, 2024. The film has a running time of 98 minutes and will not be rated by the MPAA.

Something like four out of every five screeners I get to review are for horror movies. It makes sense; there are multiple horror-centric streaming services out there, and I’m a big horror fan. So I have no problem getting those pictures in and having a first look at them! Horror is a big part of my passion for movies, after all.

But every so often, it certainly is nice to get a non-horror screener and see what I think of it. From dramas like Space Oddity and A Bit Of Light to comedies like Hundreds Of Beavers to documentaries like Create Or Die, some of my favorite screeners I’ve gotten to review have been of the non-horror variety. 

So I was quite happy to get a chance to review Charlie Tango–a drama picture that is coming to streaming services soon–and to see how it compares to some other movies I’ve gotten to watch.

Charlie Tango is the story of Kim (Mistysyn), an air traffic controller put on leave from her job after two aircraft collide in mid-air during her shift. Needing money to hire a lawyer–and just needing something to distract her from her own thoughts–she takes a job at a real estate investment firm run by her lover, Charlie (La Haye). 

She and Charlie get her husband, Jeff (Dinsmore), to put their savings into the firm to help them make the money they need for the lawyer, but it’s soon after that that everything starts to collapse.

As Jeff finds out about the affair and Kim finds out that Charlie’s firm is all a massive Ponzi Scheme scam, can the couple survive all of their mistrust and get back on their feet?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ A lot of movies have an interesting inciting incident, but Charle Tango has our overworked protagonist working as an air traffic controller and causing a collision mid-air between two planes! The rest of our film rides on that pivotal moment. There are inciting incidents, and then there is THIS!

There were times where I was concerned that maybe the movie wasn’t paying enough attention to the fact that Kim accidentally got a small, private plane full of passengers killed, but honestly, you can feel the weight of that opening behind almost every scene. If not for the occurrence, most of what we see would not be happening.

In another movie, this would be the central plot, and we would be seeing a story about Kim facing responsibility for what happened. But Charlie Tango uses this moment to go in another direction and tell its own story. That’s ballsy!

+ Speaking of balls! The film does a great job of keeping many of them in the air, with a plot that has a lot of goings-on. Between the aircraft collision and everything Kim has to face in the aftermath of that, Kim’s affair with Charlie, Charlie’s involvement with another woman whose rent he pays, and the investigation into Charlie’s investment scheme… there is a lot going on here. There’s more, too, but I’ll leave that for you to discover as you watch this one!

Again, in a movie with some lesser writing, the plot would have a very hard time meting out all of the details to all of its arcs. But the screenwriters and the directors do an excellent job handling all of them, and they deserve credit for that.

– The acting across this movie is fine, if slightly underwhelming. It’s not bad enough to ever take you out of the movie or anything, but it does come across as just adequate at best, unfortunately. 

David La Haye is probably the strongest of the cast as Charlie, but especially in the back half of the film, he comes across as almost moustache-twirlingly evil. He is certainly fun at moments in his larger-than-life performance, but he lacks a semblance of depth to his character.

Mistysyn is the lead character, Kim. And again, she is fine and doesn’t hurt the film in any way. But she is also largely forgettable in the role. She doesn’t convey a great sense of regret or loss over her involvement in the air crash, though she does at least have chemistry with La Haye.

The third lead is Dinsmore, as Jeff, Kim’s husband. He also seems to lack the conviction of the emotions he should be feeling at most times. Again: fine, but not memorable. 

It’s a shame because the story is so strong. The actors are game, but they don’t quite measure all the way up to the promise of the script.

– After everything is settled and the story feels mostly over, the film has one more scene to deliver to us. I won’t go in-depth into it since, as the final scene, it would be a massive spoiler, but it kind of closes the last loop the movie has.

The problem is that this final bit still manages to feel tacked-on and cliche. There could have been a better overall resolution to that final beat, but what we get is too expected and too clean.

OVERALL

Charlie Tango has an interesting plot and a well-managed story that is weighed down by some average acting throughout. Even then, the story might be trying to do a bit TOO much by the time you get to the third act, but you have to appreciate the big swing. 

★★★ Out of 5