SDIFF 2025 : Caper Give me that phone!

After a sex-text is mistakenly sent to their killer boss, a group of clueless but loyal friends try all night in misadventures through New York to try and prevent the “sext” from going through!

There is a great deal about toxic masculinity floating through our reality in this brave new world of 2025, but very little about genuinely good guy friendships. Not “bromances”, not beleaguered husbands being goaded into giving-a-sh*t by their harpy wives, not dude-bros who want to help you find your inner male beast through shredded gym sessions and healthy grass drinks, no, we’re talking about real down-to-earth and completely bumbling normal guys who happen to care about, if not well, okay yes love, their male friends. And at its gigantic dumbass heart, that being willing to do whatever it takes to save your guy pal from jail and/or evisceration by the killer feminist boss feeling, is entirely what Caper is all about. Make sure your cellphone is all charged up, and let’s get into this!

So the weekly card game amidst the gang of guys has come to an abrupt standstill, because Phil hasn’t arrived yet. Chris (Christopher Tramantana) seems to kind of be the de facto leader of the group, or at the very least, we’re meeting at his place for card nights, and of course, he’s a frustrated actor turned director of stage plays no one seems to understand, or want to watch. Chris is also nursing a horrendous breakup he refuses to talk about, which sets a basic shared mood for the women’s troubles with the other fellas. Silvio (Celester Rich) is our resident would-be lothario, able to seduce any and all kinds of women with a wink of his eye and a saucy

run-through of all his best lines, pickups, compliments, and distractions – at least, in his own mind. Reality is sadly quite different. Duke (Asa James) is, or was rather, juggling more than one girlfriend at once and not doing terribly well with any of them. And then there’s Larry (Richard Cooper), the one with more money than sense, who thinks them greenbacks can open any door and persuade any person, which apparently doesn’t apply at all to jaded New Yorkers. And lastly is Billy (Sam Gilroy), the inevitable stoner and sage-smudging healer friend type, who stays behind in the apartment to try and keep tabs on Phil and prevent him from, yknow, doing something permanent.

Then we come to the centerpiece of our predicament, Phil (Ron Palais). So Phil’s marriage has been unhappy for a while, and being a man with needs, Phil decided to seek fulfillment elsewhere. Apparently, in the arms of a woman who, it turns out, is deep into kink and BDSM and all sorts of fetishistic sexual acts, which Phil embraces with gusto as well. And in the midst of all this joyous exploration, Phil decided to do himself up in a seriously compromising

kink-laden pic he intended to only send his mistress, which ends up mistakenly being sent to the ultra-feminist killer boss lady, Janet (Anne Klaus). Now his sympathetic friends, minus babysitter Billy and Phil himself, are going to go off into the New York night and try however they can to get that terrible “sext” erased!

What follows is a rather madcap adventure that’s full of attempts that should work in their simplicity, and never do, for various progressively dumber reasons. The break into a hotel method via bribing the door guard hasn’t worked in over 20 years, but let’s try that anyway. Then there’s hiring a grown man who still uses the handle Mysterio (Michael Panes) to give them clues about where and how to hire a hacker, which doesn’t work out either. And the mere fact that the guys are forced into fetish costumes the likes of which Phil and his mistress would be more likely to wear when they want to get into the sex club that purportedly houses a hacker owner willing to help, should’ve told them that that method was going to go kaput, too. They sure didn’t expect it to be literal.

Through the fellas’ adventures in pre-dawn New York, they all end up facing pasts with various women and learning life lessons, rather reluctantly, but whatever. Grown man-child on a quest to save his friend from his dumbass mistake or not, it takes a real man to buck it up and say, “I was wrong, I’m sorry.”

Filmed entirely in New York City, Caper brings us a story of genuine friendship, bumbling guy comedy, and the reminder that it’s never too late to learn, to grow, to even start over, all with the help of some true friends.