Usher Morgan’s ‘Pickings’ Hits Theaters March 2

In the world of the neo-noir crime saga Pickings, southern belle Jo (Elyse Price) escapes a life of crime with the love of her life Marvin Lee-Haywood (Taso Mikroulis) to raise a family as law-abiding citizens.

But the violence quickly follows her into suburbia, tragically claiming the lives of her husband and her youngest child. Jo and the rest of the Haywood clan flee deeper into the Midwest, hiding in plain sight as the owners of the local watering pit, the Pickings Bar. Life goes on, the family heals, and the children grow. Soon Jo’s eldest daughter Scarlet (Katie Vincent) comes into her own, mixing drinks and running the bar.

The sinister darkness creeps back into the Haywoods’ lives when two strangers arrive at the bar late one night. A local small-town mobster has caught the bar’s scent and he wants a taste. But when his men demand what isn’t rightfully theirs, they find out they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. Jo and her brother Boone Pickens (Joel Bernard) make quick work of the peacocking cowards; Jo as the executioner and Boone, the mortician. A shocked Scarlet watches in horror, finally grasping a full understanding of her mother’s former life.

But mob boss Leo DeVitto (Emil Ferzola) isn’t one to roll over that easily. Once he notices his henchmen missing, he sends reinforcements. Another Haywood child dies at the bloodstained hands of criminals; this time it is Jo’s only son, Dawson (Christopher Liam Gentry), who is left to bleed out in the street. Meanwhile, Scarlet is kidnapped and held by Leo’s men as a bargaining chip. Heartbroken and desperate, Jo is forced to make a call to save her daughter’s life. She calls her sisters, Doris (Michelle Holland) and May Pickens (Lynne Jordan), the notorious queens of the Pickens family crime syndicate.

The Pickens family unites under one roof once again with a common goal. Leo DeVitto has messed with the wrong family; his small brain can’t even begin to comprehend the hurt the Pickens women and their brother are about to rain down. With a plan in motion, the Pickens prepare for war. The small town is wiped clean of Leo and his men as the Pickens’ wrath burns through the town. There is no happy ever after, but the bad get what’s coming to them in this action-filled crime drama. The Kill Bill-style film highlights the power in the wrath of a wounded mother and the lengths she will go to protect the children she has left.