Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Directed by

The Ross Brothers
2020
98 mins

If you’ve ever been to a bar and conversed intimately with a stranger. If you’ve ever been to a bar and attempted to drink your sorrows away. If you’ve ever been to a bar and almost got in a fight for no reason. If you’ve ever been to a bar and it closes before you’re ready to leave. If you’ve ever been to a bar….

 

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets has an undoubted unique quality to feel very familiar and yet also totally specific to its place and people. We join the barflies and bartenders of sleazy American drinking hole The Roaring 20’s for a boozy night of celebration. It’s the Las Vegas set bar’s last night before closing down and its regulars, an eclectic mix of working-class people, have come to give one last liquor fueled send-off. What we get is a pure melancholy amidst the fuzzy glow of the bar’s seedy lighting and blaring jukebox but above all, the poetic and heartfelt ramblings of these patrons and their lost souls.

 

This is a drunken hangout movie that is always absorbing, often hilarious, and also a quite tragic portrait of the alcoholic lifestyle.