An unlikely assassin finds himself in turn of the century Vienna in order to kill history’s most notorious dictator.
Time travel films can always get a little complicated, and timeline questions always come into play. But things get even more iffy when playing around with historical events, where the angle approached needs to be so carefully managed. Unless you are Andrew Laurich and add a great deal of comical relief in a rather absurdly dramatic situation.
Much like our last film, A REASONABLE REQUEST, we like playing in the grounded absurdist world of real hypotheticals. With A STUDY IN TYRANNY, it was answering the question of what it would really look like if you went back in time to kill Hitler — but weren’t really prepared for it. As we put more research into its writing, we realized just how eerily strong the parallels were between Hitler’s rise and Trump’s rise. That’s when we decided to release it in conjunction with the US inauguration — as a sort of cautionary tale, as it were.
What aids the development of Andrew’s little story, is the approach and focus of the actual segment, leaving behind any “how’s”, and really leaving the science fiction part out of the film by jumping straight into the “what we know”. The debunking of one of the most historical figures ever comes at cynical and innocent angle, which makes the turn out of the all so delightful.