Thriller Review: 4.3.2.1

What is 4.3.2.1 about?

While Jo (Roberts) is chained down in a dead end supermarket job, her friends are all out on their own separate adventures: Cassandra (Egerton) is jetting off to New York to meet her Internet boyfriend; Kerrys (Warren-Markland) is on a one woman crusade fighting for female liberation and Shannon (Lovibond) is on a one way trip to meet her maker. But a chance encounter with some diamond thieves sends their separate worlds on a collision course with not only each other, but fate itself. These 4 girls are about to have 3 days they will never forget, spanning to 2 cities. That is ... if they survive. – Source IMDB.

The opening sequence starts with the titles, the opening credits are based on a black background connoting the dark and menacing atmosphere of a thriller. The sound used during the opening credits is very eerie which is good for the genre.
The opening shot is an extreme close up of the character Shannon, they’ve used a straight cut from the titles to her face, they keep the shot with diegetic sound from the shot for the duration of 6 seconds before it does a speedy zoom out into a establishing shot of Shannon standing on the edge of a bridge, already causing suspense and tension within the first few seconds. It then straight cuts again into a low angle shot of a car pulling up and three girls stepping out with a gun. This causes confusion for the audience, as we have no idea what is going on however we still feel the tension. It then cuts to Shannon who is shown on the right hand side of the frame showing her vulnerability. It then shows another close up of her face and straight cuts again to her falling off the edge transitioning into a black screen.
This causes the audience to feel confused because we have no idea what is going on. We hear the song “4.3.2.1 go baby go” play over the black screen and the numbers 4.3.2.1 appear on the screen in white connoting a sense of purity over the violent connotation of the black.
You can listen to the song here:




As you can see the song is a very unconventional for a thriller, as you’d not expect to hear this music for the opening of a thriller. It then moves on to clips of four very different girls in their everyday lives using straight cuts again to transition into each clip. The use of straight cuts keeps the audience alert within the scene, commonly used in action sequences to keep the audience involved. We then see these four girls come together at a casual café as friends, which makes us ask more questions over why three of them were holding one at gun point right at the beginning.
Overall the first 3 minutes of the film have introduced us to the main characters and captured the audiences’ interest to see how the beginning images play out from the beginning.