I quite liked the narration, as the others have said. Overall, it's a very fine short film - the acting was fine, the script was up to scratch and the casting wasn't bad, though, as the above guy said, you might have possibly been able to get someone else than Alex to play the prison guy, but he still does a pretty damn good job at it anyway. People who get out of prison, especially drug addicts, just look less...
clean than Alex, which may actually be a fault in the make-up department rather than the casting. Doing something like messing up his hair and giving him bags under his eyes, whilst telling him to act slightly more
tired could probably help eliminate any faults in his performance.
The weakest part of the entire piece though, I would say, was the camera work - not the composition, but simply how steady the shots were. It was
extremely obvious what shots were done with a tripod/surface and which were done by holding the camera - for one, the café scene was just terrible to watch because of how unsteady those shots were. I'd seriously invest in a steady cam, or perhaps steady out the shots in post-production (something that can be done in Adobe After Effects with relative ease, but I'm not sure about other programs).
If for some reason that was intentional, then it was wrong - the shakiness seemed appropriate for one scene out of all of them, which was the one where Alex was taking the drugs towards the ends. At most other points (which was basically after the narration and before the drugs) it was just inappropriate.
Steadycam on a budget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT72hoYxESI
Steadycam on no budget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW6AWmqa8ZM
Overall though, I liked it, and I'm looking forward to the next part