Marmalade is directed by Keir O’Donnell which is his directorial debut. 

I honestly had no idea what to expect from Marmalade going in, what got my attention was the cast as well as O’Donnell an actor who has done quite a bit of work (Wedding Crashers, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, The Break-Up, Gifted and many others)  being in the director’s chair. Despite a couple missteps this was definitely a huge surprise. 

Joe Kerry, Camila Morrone and Aldis Hodge all give quite fantastic performances, each of them bring something special to the table. Kerry and Morrone completely nail every single scene the two are together in, they capture this line of being surprisingly wholesome while being absolutely insane. Joey Kerry’s character Baron talking about how much his mother means to him and doing anything he can to insure his mother’s health and safety is touching and quite meaningful as well. 

Camila Morrone is truly fun here, her character Marmalade is a great mix with Baron and the two ooze with chemistry. The little moments of Marmalade and Baron talking about each other’s past, family and why they need the money so bad is some incredibly strong character work that really shows the acting talent of Kerry and Morrone. The conversation between Kerry and Aldis Hodge is quite great as well, there’s so many character moments, emotional moments and a lot of dialogue heavy clues that paint a pretty interesting picture that happens later in the film.

I do think the movie does suffer from the first act being a bit too generic, Marmalade starts out as very typical heist drama movie where the main characters plan out the heist. However when the second act rolls around that’s when the movie gets interesting, there are a ton of plot twists that are cleverly written into the story. The script from Keir O’Donnell manages to take a familiar heist movie and turn into something quite different from what we normally see.

Between the strong performances, the plot twists and O’Donnell’s direction and writing. Marmalade is definitely something worth checking out if you haven’t seen it!

Marmalade is available on all VOD platforms.

8/10 B+