Free Time (2023)
Directed by Ryan Martin Brown
My affinity for pro wrestling waxes and wanes based on the quality of the product, but also based on my allegiance to certain wrestlers themselves. In my teen years, I followed World Wrestling Entertainment but would quickly grow interested in the indie scene, where I’d pour over results of the latest Ring of Honor or Pro Wrestling Guerrilla show. Most of the wrestlers of that era, whether it be The Human Tornado or Johnny Kashmere or Matt Bentley, were lost to time, but I’d always be exceedingly excited when one of my favorites (or indie darlings, as the Internet Wrestling Community calls them) would make the jump to the WWE. I remember feeling this way when Paul London was featured. A perennial babyface, fans from Ring of Honor would remember him performing a shooting star press from atop a ladder in a gymnasium. I hadn’t seen anything like it at the time, as fans chanted “Please don’t die” at all of his risky stunts. He had moderate success as a midcard tag team wrestler in the mid to late aughts for the WWE, but he never quite broke through that glass ceiling. I saw him perform a year ago at a local promotion called Freelance Wrestling. In his 40s, with a gut and graying hair, the man I knew had a major fall off. He attempted to perform his signature shooting star press maneuver (at the top rope facing his supine opponent, the move features a backwards leap, where London would rotate his body forward in a somersault motion, aiming to land belly-down on his opponent), but he couldn’t make the rotation, with his body contorting awkwardly as he landed with a vicious thud. It was tough to watch.
Another favorite, and someone who ended up making it big, was CM Punk. His pipe bomb interview of 2011 remains one of the most important promos in contemporary pro wrestling history, where he verbally eviscerated the inane bureaucracy that dominated his industry. It was a passionate call-to-action and changed the perception of who could be considered a top, main event level figure in professional wrestling. He retired for seven years before returning to All Elite Wrestling in 2021, where he’d harbor personal feuds with various members of the roster and Executive Vice Presidents before getting fired for misconduct. He returned to the WWE last November, but something was different. The man who rebelled against the homogenization and bureaucracy of the WWE, who donned all black and refused to placate a passive audience, was now wearing fitted suits, suggesting that the “CM” in CM Punk now stood for “Company Man.” The tides have changed.
Ryan Martin Brown’s Free Time follows Drew (Colin Burgess). We first observe him trepidatiously quitting his data entry job in New York City, pussyfooting about his role in a company where he feels like little more than a spoke on the wheel. So he quits, with no safety net or plan to speak of. But after an afternoon spent in leisure, negotiating the guilt of spending money when there’s nothing coming in, he realizes he’s made a mistake. He attempts to go back to his old job, only to be rebuffed. And so he spirals into despair, meeting up with a woman to awkwardly go for a walk, and then submitting a resume for his old job under a sobriquet. He gets called in for an interview, where he’s escorted by security, but not before he delivers a pipe bomb of his own, admonishing his old boss in front of his former colleagues. This prompts a few of them to leave the company, and for Drew to embrace a life as a cult of personality of sorts, the wayward shepherd of men of a certain age; lost, privileged, skilled at nothing yet overeducated, and without a war to fight. The stuff of David Foster Wallace.
I admired Burgess’ performance here, who articulates and examines a specific type of white male ennui. There’s a lot of warmth to his idiosyncrasies, in what feels rooted in fear and despondency. Unfortunately, Brown’s scripting is a bit sitcom-y, particularly in his subplot involving Drew’s band. As the group pivots into a more country melody, Drew’s heavy-handed keyboard influences have no place within the band, and everyone’s refusal to comment on what everyone knows gets old rather fast. It’s the latter portion of the film, where Drew’s disparaging remarks about his former boss earning him the respect of other wayward males, that feels especially underrealized. Presumably months after he leaves his job, we find Drew living in a tent with other men, struggling to find any meaning in their existence. Drew overhears how all these men are leaving their jobs en masse and decides to return to the workforce, embracing the capitalist mentality that caused him to leave in the first place. The final shot, with a slow zoom out on Drew as he sits at his desk, with the chatter of an office (mostly women, which I found interesting) making up the cacophony of sound before going to black.
Brown’s ideas are intriguing within a vacuum but they are strung together rather haphazardly, with Burgess keeping the thing afloat through his awkward charisma. The visual palette of largely auburn hues gives the film a rather compelling glow, which certainly elevates the picture beyond other indie-sleaze films of this ilk. But clocking in at under 80 minutes, I was left wanting a whole lot more out of the ideas that Brown presents. Which ultimately left my mind to wander, reflecting on the uncertainty that drove Drew; the ideas and ire that he expressed reminded me of myself at that age, and why someone like CM Punk left such an indelible impact on my worldview. I’ve gone long on some of the terrible bosses of my life. What I saw in Punk’s pipe bomb, and subsequently in glimpses in Drew’s outburst, was a refusal to tolerate the status quo; when life is hard, why accept the present circumstances as anything other than finite. These acts of defiance can seem graceful, but as both Drew and probably Punk would attest, the fallout can be utterly cataclysmic. And so you’re left wondering if your worldview was right in the first place. Call it a resignation, call it fatigue, but eventually, putting up the good fight leaves you worn out. And so Drew returns to clicking and clacking away at a desktop computer. Punk puts a suit on. And Paul London nearly breaks his neck performing for a drunken crowd of probably a hundred. The Daniel Nava of fifteen years ago would be terribly disappointed, but sometimes you have to learn when to quit.