A nervous getaway driver waits as his impulsive brother robs a bank.


DOUBLE YELLOW is used with permission from Ruairi Heading. Learn more at https://take10film.com.


Tommy is nervous; he has a bad feeling about the situation. His twin is looser and more relaxed, with a sarcastic sense of humor that enjoys teasing the more anxious Tommy, which only makes him more irritated. They're a study in contrasts, seemingly as different as night and day. But as the robbery unfolds and Tommy hits an obstacle of his own, they may not be so different after all.

Directed and written by Ruairi Heading, who stars as both twins, this short action-drama offers a wry, more human-scale take on the crime film, choosing to stick with the getaway driver as the seemingly more dramatic main action folds offscreen. Told with sharp attention to detail and an eye for building character as much as suspense, it becomes a portrait of the relationship between two twin brothers, in all their differences and commonalities.

The film opens in the car as Tommy drives his brother, preparing his gun and joking in the backseat. Tommy doesn't appreciate his brother's jokes; he's all nerves and has a bad feeling about what they're about to do. Though the setting is cramped and cloistered, rendered in a workaday naturalism, the pulse of the electronic musical score hints at the adrenaline building up in both the characters and the storytelling.

Yet even as the pace and pressure slowly ratchet up, the well-wrought dialogue also portrays the brothers' difference in astute economy, from Tommy's anxiety and his twin's more devil-may-care approach. As an actor, Heading offers a subtle and precise performance as both Tommy and his wilder twin, capturing their different temperaments and their overall relationship. Tommy's twin seems to be the more dominant one, and it's easy for viewers to believe that his more intense drive could take advantage of Tommy's seeming meekness to corral him into his schemes. But there are hints early on that things are more complicated than that, and when Tommy hits a smaller-scale but still tense obstacle during the crime, the building tension and nerves in him take him to the edge.

Compelling, perceptive and dryly funny, DOUBLE YELLOW ends with these seemingly different twins in the same place, both sharing in the jolt of the experience and perhaps revising our initial perceptions of their relationship. Taken along with a droll, almost offhand zinger at the end, it makes for a strange, almost wondrous meditation on the synergy and symbiosis between these twin brothers, with a shared private world and experience that exists only between them and bringing a new dimension to the idea of the thriller.