Vancouver specialty advertising salesman Leo Falloon (Brent Butt) is having another slow day at work when the beautiful, distraught Kyra (Amy Smart) comes into his office, worried about her missing brother. Leo, who is attracted to the woman, doesn’t bother to point out that she has mistaken him for the private detective across the hall. Instead, Leo takes on the case and soon finds himself in the middle of possible murder case involving rival video game companies, with no clue how to proceed—and just his knowledge of hard-boiled detective films to guide him. But as he bumbles his way through the investigation, he discovers that Kyra may not have been totally truthful about herself either.

 
No Clue has the look and feel of a film-nor detective story, but with an added layer of humor. At the core is an interesting murder-mystery that keeps the viewer guessing throughout the twists and turns of the investigation. You never quite know if any of the characters are who they say they are. Add to this the layer of comedy as the clueless Leo gets thrust into the investigation, and you’ve got a fun mystery romp. While I didn’t find the film as laugh-out-loud funny as I thought it would be based on the trailer, I did find it quite entertaining and humorous.

No Clue has some similarities to the film Fletch. We see Leo lie and dress-up in costumes in order to get into places to further his investigation. And like Fletch, behind the comedy there is a serious mystery with potentially life-threatening consequences. So the film is able to provide laughs but also still feel grounded and not totally absurd and ridiculous.

Folks familiar with Brent Butt’s work on Corner Gas should enjoy his first foray into the feature film world. While the look and tone of this film is quite different from Corner Gas, No Clue also provides some fun characters, and features that same fast-talking, awkward-rambling style of humor that Butt does so well. The rest of the cast includes a lot of talented familiar faces—especially if you watch a lot of Canadian productions, like I do. These include Kirsten Prout (Kyle XY, The Lying Game), Dustin Milligan (90210), David Cubitt (Traders, Medium), Dan Payne (Tower Prep, Primeval: New World) and David Koechner (The Office, Anchorman).

The cast works well together and has some fun on-screen chemistry. I really like how the film wraps things up in the end, and sets up a potential franchise—if they were to release more films in this series, I’d check them out.

As for the technical presentation of the film, the video on the DVD for the most part looks good, but I found some scenes were a bit too dark, and a bit muddled. The audio track delivers the dialogue and music clearly, but I never heard any great use of the surround channels to bring the viewer into the action of the film. As for bonus features, there is a highly-entertaining audio commentary by the producers as well as a short behind-the-scenes featurette with the cast and creators.

Overall, I enjoyed the film, and think it’s worth checking out—especially if you are a Brent Butt fan.

What’s Included:

Film: (1:36:09)

Blu-ray:
• 480p / Widescreen 2.35:1
• Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

• Audio Commentary with Actor Brent Butt and Director Carl Bessai (1:36:09)
  The creators provide an entertaining running commentary throughout the film. The guys have a lot of fun, cracking jokes while providing a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits about the production.
• Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (11:28)
  The cast and creators talk about shooting Vancouver as Vancouver, the story, the characters, and the mystery, noir and comedy aspects of the film. Includes on-the-set footage and interviews with writer/producer/star Brent Butt (“Leo”), director Carl Bessai, and actors Amy Smart (“Kyra”), Dustin Milligan (“Danny”), Kirsten Prout (“Reese”), David Koechner (“Ernie”), Dan Payne (“Church”), and David Cubitt (“Horn”).

Final Thoughts:

No Clue takes an interesting film-noir style mystery and adds a fun layer of bumbling, clueless detective comedy. Fans of Brent Butt’s style of humor should enjoy his first feature-length foray, and Corner Gas fans will enjoy a cameo by Nancy Robertson. The DVD contains a great audio commentary and a nice look behind-the-scenes with the cast.