Indie director Jim Cummings and co-star PJ McCabe have made a scornful part-thriller about an unctuous agent in thrall to the system
Writer-director-actor Jim Cummings’ has already made two films, Thunder Road and The Wolf of
SNOW Hollow, which were very well received on the
American indie circuit. His latest, The Beta Test, co-written and directed with its co-star PJ McCabe, is part delicious satire of
Hollywood culture and part frustratingly muddled thriller. But the good bits are sufficiently impressive it wouldn’t be fair to hold its flaws against it too much. We mustn’t be greedy for perfection.
Greed, as it happens, is probably the major sin of a Tinseltown agent called Jordan (played by Cummings), followed closely by lust, wrath, pride and envy. Given his rigorously gym-toned figure it would seem that Jordan is less guilty of gluttony or sloth, but there’s probably more than enough venal behaviour here to condemn him to the circle in hell reserved for unctuous talent wranglers and bank managers. As the film gets going, we learn Jordan is going to be married soon to Caroline (Virginia Newcomb), about whom Jordan and the film itself seem to have so little interest, apart from making fun of her obsession with her upcoming nuptials, that we don’t even know what she does for a living.