I just don’t relate to short guys, and I don’t mean that negatively. I’ve never agreed with Randy Newman and I completely agree that “it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” But I’ve always felt a certain remove from guys who’ve never grown beyond the size I was when I was ten. When I see a short guy pulling a gun or kissing a girl or beating up some guy in a bar, I don’t say to myself “okay, whatever” — I say to myself “whoa, that short guy isn’t letting his stature determine his attitude or fate!” And I respect their rage. Everyone knows angry short guys can be more ferocious than anyone. Napoleon Bonaparte, Truman Capote, Swifty Lazar, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, etc.

All to say that the first thing I noticed when I watched this Wasteland trailer is that Luke Treadaway is a little guy. (Roughly the size of Charlie Kaufman.) And Iwan Rheon, Gerard Kearns and Matthew Lewis are no giants-of-the-earth either.

This isn’t a “problem” per se, but it gets in the way. Sorta kinda, I mean. And yet Dustin Hoffman‘s shortness worked in his favor in Marathon Man, I think.

“A smart, penetrating first feature by the UK’s Rowan Athale, Wasteland is a deconstructed heist film that eschews the genre’s usual quick cutting and gritty visuals in favor of a quieter, more intimate approach,” Hollywood Reporter critic Michael Rechtstaffen wrote last September. “While it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, it does offer a distinct way of watching it spin, with a young, fresh-faced cast to help bring it to life.”

“The wasteland in question refers to the gloomily grey skies of Yorkshire, where one of its working class residents, Harvey (Treadaway) is being calmly interrogated by the stoic Detective Inspector West (Timothy Spall). Seriously bloodied and bruised, Luke recounts the chain of events that brought him to that state, starting with his being released from prison on drug possession charges.

“Determined to get revenge on Roper (Neil Maskell) the sadistic drug lord who set him up for the fall, Luke enlists his mates (Iwan Rheon, Gerard Kearns, Matthew Lewis) to perpetrate the robbery of a workingmen’s club where Roper’s headquartered.

“Of course, like all good heist pictures, not everything turns out to be quite as it appears, and writer-director Athale obligingly lays down the various plot twists and turns.”