Quendrith Johnson

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Peter Gerety and Talia Shire? Yes, they’ve been in your film and TV memory for years, maybe growing up, maybe now in your streaming awareness.

Think Shire of ROCKY franchise fame and Gerety (“The Wire”) of almost every procedural TV show of note since the 90’s. 

These are real-people type actors who’ve have teamed up with Billy Brown (“Sons of Anarchy”), as well as a perfectly tuned cast, to deliver a message movie, WORKING MAN. The timing is perfect when unemployment is on the same exponential curve with COVID19. 

This heart-thumping sentence - “You need work to feel like you’re worth something” - is the clarion call to everyone at home right now due to the Coronavirus. 

From Brainstorm Releasing on VOD May 5, WORKING MAN - which includes working women - is one of those screen experiences that cuts through the candy-bloat of pop-culture, more of a gut punch through the drywall of civility in tough times.

Gerety brings his heavy-fisted hammer down on ageism. job insecurity, and how The Powers That Be shape our lives, tell us to stay in, get out, move on until we die… if we let them.

WORKING MAN’s trailer is on view here, after this official description from Brainstorm Releasing.

It’s a Rust Belt Epic

When the last factory in a small Rust Belt town closes its doors, an unlikely hero emerges in dutiful, quiet Allery Parkes (Peter Gerety). A career employee of the factory, the aging Allery can’t reconcile how to live a life simply sitting at home doing nothing, and against the advice and pleas of his loving wife, Iola (Talia Shire), he forms an unlikely friendship with his charismatic neighbor, Walter Brewer (Billy Brown), in order to revive the defunct factory. As their community rallies around them – and as their former corporate bosses strategize how to implode this unexpected movement – Allery learns that he might be something he never thought possible: a leader.

This Film Is So Right Now, Now…

Who Made WORKING MAN?

Written and directed by Robert Jury. Produced by Clark Peterson, Robert Jury, Maya Emelle and Lovell Holder. Executive Produced by Katherine Eslao, Tim Ranzetta, Lee V. Stiff and Morgan R. Stiff. Edited by Moran Halsey. Stars Peter Gerety, Billy Brown, Talia Shire. A Brainstorm Media release.

So great to see Peter Gerety and Talia Shire get to take a swing at leading roles in WORKING MAN.

Catch it on VOD May 5 during this Stay-At-Home edict in Pandemic times.

Visit the movie here.

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