The film “Puncture” is a smart, wonderfully grown-up and wound tight courtroom drama-slash-political thriller, driven in part by a tour de force performance from Chris Evans playing hot-shot and hot-headed, drug-addled attorney Mark Weiss. The film also boasts the steady, balancing hand of co-director and co-star Mark Kassan. Mark co-directs with his brother Adam. (They formerly brought the unusual and beautifully well-acted “Bernard and Doris,” starring Susan Sarandon, to HBO recently.)
I sat down with Chris Evans, the brothers Kassan, and the lovely Vinessa Shaw, who plays the film’s heart beat and literal face of the movie’s subject- the terrifying fact that front-care and ER healthcare workers were once infected by AIDs and Hepatitis C on a daily basis by accidental needle stabs. When an engineer develops a non-reusable needle that is literally “accident-proof,” the movie heats up as law partners Paul Danziger (Mark Kassan) and Mike Weiss (Chris Evans) take on the case to battle the largest manufacturer of plastic needles in the world. Billed as a “David & Goliath legal drama,” the film world premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. {jathumbnail off}