Bliss is the second of a planned trilogy of films from writer, director, and producer Joe Maggio. The first film Virgil Bliss came out in 2001 and starred Clint Jordan as the title character Virgil Bliss. He gets paroled from prison and ends up in a halfway house. While outside walking he befriends a hooker on the street in New York City named Ruby (Kirsten Russell). Virgil wants to have a relationship with her. He convinces her to go visit Coney Island together. She’s a bit of a troublemaker. She’s a drug addict but he doesn’t give up on her. They end up getting a lot closer despite his halfway house roommate Manny (Anthony Gorman) or her pimp

The second film picks up twenty years later in California, as Virgil/Duane (Clint Jordan), lives with a girl named Amy (Faryl Amadeus) Amy gets a distressing phone call and then tragedy strikes as she dies of a drug overdose. A  strange vehicle shows up at their house. It turns out it’s Amy’s sister Jo (Faryl Amadeus), who’s very religious, Virgil feels bad about what happened to Amy and tries to hide the evidence of her overdose in a can in the backyard. Jo Amy’s sister found a can of drugs that Virgil hid in the backyard. Even though he was straight-edge in the past he is taking drugs to help his situation now. 

Joe Maggio from what I heard had some ups and downs in the past twenty years that slowed the production of the second part of his Bliss Trilogy. The first movie seemed like a bit of gorilla filmmaking and the performances showed that. The second film seemed more professional. The cinematography and camera work are night and day different. It helped that the second movie is set in California and not on some backstreet of New York City. The California hills are beautiful to look at. 

Clint Jordan was an unknown actor back in 2001. He came across as very raw and untrained back then. Today he’s more experienced but he still is mainly known for his role in Virgil Bliss. It’s the signature character he’s played in his career. In this movie, he’s more emotional and shows more range as an actor. His work opposite Faryl Amadeus is very good. Maggio has set him up quite nicely in this second film in the trilogy. Where the trilogy goes from here nobody knows but if it’s as interesting as these two it’ll surely be pretty interesting.

As indie films, these two movies have done their job of establishing a pretty good character. He just seems to me like a guy who ends up in bad situations and eventually finds his way out of them. His past catches up with him but then he figures a way out of trouble. That’s just how Maggio and the writers have written him. He is the only character that remains from the first film but both women he starred opposite him brought out the best in the character of Virgil Bliss. This is a character I want to see get his conclusive end in the third film in the trilogy. I never thought I’d care about him that much but I do care. He’s a sympathetic character.

Bliss takes what Maggio and company started and expands on it pretty well. I wish I could have seen the first film sooner but the fact that I got to see both movies back to back helped me contextualize the world Maggie created. The work of Jordan was raw and untrained in the first film yet honed and more experienced in the second movie in the planned trilogy. The supporting work by Faryl Amadeus as two characters was very good. She was quite different in both roles. This is a surprisingly enjoyable experience for me and I can’t wait for the third film to see this character’s rightful conclusion. I hope it lives up to these two films I just watched.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen