|
Red State
| Released |
30 September 2011 |
| Director |
Kevin Smith |
Starring
|
Michael Parks, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun, Kyle Gallner, Kerry Bishe, Stephen Root |
| Writer(s) |
Kevin Smith |
| Producer(s) |
Jonathan Gordon |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
88 minutes |
| Genre |
Horror, thriller |
| Rating |
18 |
|
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Carnage at the Commune.
Mostly known as a ‘90s director, Kevin Smith's name hasn't stood beside a phrase like 'zeitgeist' or 'fresh' other than in the past tense for quite some time. Despite this Mallrats’ Silent Bob has never truly kept quiet making a string consecutive box office no-shows since 2000. Sure, he's had less critical acclaim of late (read: damaging controversy and some incredible critical lambastings) but he's still muddled through, a talent who seemed to have lost his voice a little. Some of his recent efforts have just been retreads of other films from his oeuvre harkening back to previous successes as with Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II. But while 2008's Zack and Miri Make a Porno seemed both a recovery of quality and familiar investigation into the sexual mores of twenty-something dating for the Chasing Amy director audiences still weren't wowed. And worse was still to come when 2010's Bruce Willis / Tracy Morgan vehicle Cop Out saw further critical pannings heaped atop an already impressively teetering tower of evidence that pointed to Kevin Smith's lack of currency post the millennial odometer ticking over.
With a new film released this Friday touted as 'Kevin Smith does genre' audiences whose enthusiasm for Smith's particular brand of auteurship went into sharp decline after the inexplicably awful Jersey Girl might ask what's in the offing this time around? Well, genre is something that Smith's more than dabbled in before, you might say that it's what has informed his work most but Red State still marks a departure from the usual Mallrats, Clerks, Dogma hyperaware-teen-drawl-straight-from-an-early-internet-forum fare. The real question remaining, isn't whether Smith can do genre (as he undoubtably can) but rather can he make an overdue mature work not dependent on comic books, sexploits or stoner jokes?
Starting out in what might be the familiar vein of American teen sex comedy and transforming into something far darker, this time Smith's film runs as a surface thin allegory to religious fundamentalism in modern day America. The Phelps Family like Five Pointers exact terrible vengeance on those who don't cohere to their strict religious beliefs and when a group of teenagers, the local sheriff department and the FBI collide things turn from tense hostage situation into all out war.
There's an undercurrent of patented Kevin Smith style dialogue throughout Red State but while the one-liners dotted around the film are cleverly funny you probably won't hear the audience laugh out loud as these neither overpower nor smother the story's dramatic potential. The verisimilitude of the drama never really breaks in favour of ostentatious dialogue, except perhaps in the film's closure which is encapsulated by a usual Smith-like amount of exposition and didacticism true to his old form. Still despite not truly being purged of all Kevin Smith's patented screenwriting ticks and minor stylistic atavisms what could've only been a horror comedy a few years ago in the director's immature hands has now emerged as a taut edge of your seat thriller with an interesting political bent.
The cast itself does well with Melissa Leo (Frozen River, The Fighter) and Tarantino favourite Michael Parks having particularly affecting turns as the menacingly murderous happy clappy fundamentalists and Kerry Bishé, Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun and Michael Angarano being rather accomplished as young actors in a high-paced, demanding film. Although, we never in any conventional sense have characters that we can truly identify with it doesn't much matter, the kids are self-centred, the FBI men callous, the fundamentalists bigoted, Smith writes the American nightmare large on our screen, a world where people in self preservation constantly lunge for their enemies throat and every lawman, preacher man and workaday everyman is complicit.
While never entirely successful, and in the end more than a mite unsatisfying, in Red State Kevin Smith proves himself a talent that still ebbs in the movie industry.
- Cormac O’Brien |
