This intriguing documentary by William Joe Saunders and Alexander Greer take a pretty arcane subject — rare postage stamps — and turns it into a noirish thriller. A likely stolen multimillion dollar stamp collection is the murky connection between a possible Russian mobster named Roman and Will, the elusive central figure in the film.
Through on-camera interviews and home movies, we learn Will’s back story. He is the son of a con man who dealt in stolen art, got caught by the FBI and lost everything including his wife, son and posh home. Will is estranged from his father yet seems to carry a lot of his baggage. His willingness to store the stamp collection without question or reservation for Roman, a neighbor he knew only from outdoor cigarette breaks, seems strange from the outset — an act of either naïveté or cunning. The filmmakers try to probe Will to examine his motives, returning again and again to the sins of the father. But Will claims no ulterior motives beyond simple curiosity.
When Roman fails to show up to retrieve the stamps, Will starts to do some homework and is stunned to discover the value of the several books that make up Roman’s collection. The big ticket is a rare British postage stamp called the Penny Black, issued in 1840 and worth an exorbitant amount to collectors. There are also many other high value European and Russian postage stamps. Will’s foray into the world of philatelic shows where he converses with experts gives the film a novel and enticing setting.
Will hires a private investigator to try to flush out Roman while also meeting with a couple who claims that their uncle had a similar stamp collection that was stolen. Could these be the stamps? The mystery deepens, yet we never really know whether Will is being completely honest particularly when one of Roman’s stamp books goes missing. A classic unreliable narrator could have been a drawback to a documentary but the filmmakers turn it into an asset, allowing questions of honesty and ethics to emerge. The
audience will likely wonder what it would do if faced with the same risk and intrigue of this true crime — or is it? — tale.
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