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Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

It can be tough for a genre film enthusiast, stomping around in the backyard of marginalized film without a map. Not Quite Hollywood is that map. It gives a great overview of the legacy of films emerging from Australia in the 70s and 80s, an era that emerged as the birth of Australian cinema. 

There was little to no film industry in Australia until the 1970s. Thanks to an uptight government and public indifference, censorship in Australia was the tightest in the entire western world and the exploration of certain morally questionable themes drew red flags. But with the creation of the R certification in the 70s, filmmakers began in earnest to explore the seedier side of Australia, which comes complete with its own eccentricity and flavor.

Often low budget and with no guarantee of a profit, early Australian filmmakers were true mavericks. For every arthouse director like Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock) there were 10 directors like Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 4: In Space) making cheapo action films and working off the grid. And that's one of the biggest draws of genre films: the chance to see something completely off the grid and wild.

Not Quite Hollywood is comprised of interviews with directors and stars, and footage from in front of and behind the camera of three genres that made up the era: the sex film, the horror film and the action film. Seemingly in an effort to support his influences, Quentin Tarantino even shows up fairly often to give insight, complete with his undeniable enthusiasm. The film footage is remastered and beautiful, bringing new life to these historically mistreated works.

For a time in film that is not very well documented, it’s wonderful to have a sort of cinematic textbook. Before Not Quite Hollywood, managing Australian genre history was like playing 6 degrees of separation, linking directors and producers in an effort to make sense of it all. In fact, I found that I had seen a good chunk of these films over the years never knowing that they were Australian. Which may have been the plan all along, as directors frequently admit to denationalizing their films in an effort to turn a profit.

If you’re a film fan, you already know where you stand with Not Quite Hollywood. It's well made, well edited, and covers a lot of the seminal films in what I can now feel justified in calling the dawn of Australian film. A splendid overview of a lost era of filmmaking, Not Quite Hollywood also achieves the enviable task of being a flat out good time.

Playing Catch Up Pt.2

After an extended break due to lack of motivation, I’m back and raring to go. In my time off I’ve written notes on a few films that I’ve seen and thought I’d publish them here without trying to go back and flesh them out too rigorously, as none of them are recent. Most are short, around a paragraph or so, with a few longer ones to come in the second post. Regular length reviews should return next week or sooner.

Mongol


Another installment of the mishandled marketing mobile, Mongol is not the action film the trailers would have you believe. It's a slow moving and brooding portrait of a man and it's simply stunningly beautiful film most of the time. The only hitch comes near the end, with a stunted and confusing climax that requires expositional dialogue to straighten out. Keep in mind that his is not a film about “Genghis Khan” the man, it is about the events and relationships that made a young mongolian boy turn into the man who would be called Genghis Khan. Go in with these expectations and you will not be disappointed.

Drillbit Taylor


I often have trouble reviewing bad comedies because I keep rationalizing the film’s mediocrity by asking myself “What did you expect?” I’ve seen a few bad comedies recently, which included Strange Wilderness and Semi-Pro and I declined to review them for the simple fact that I had nothing constructive to add to the already well trodden review mileau that exists.

And Drillbit Taylor, about three young boys who hire a homeless man to protect them from a bully, doesn't quite escape these problems; it is not by any means a good movie. But it's not half bad, and I thought it might be fun to point out the one, integral, mistake it makes. The problem lies in whether the film is about Drillbit or the kids he is protecting. Should the script follow him and his sappy, terrible romance or the growing-up of the young lads in question? Obviously the answer is the latter and I wonder at what point in production this problem arose - at the script level, or later, when they found out who would be playing the titular Mr. Drillbit.

Mirrors


It doesn't take much insight to break this one down.
Alexandre Aja is at the forefront of contemporary horror. He made the startlingly scary High Tension in 2003 and in his subsequent move to Hollywood, he even managed to give us a remake of The Hills Have Eyes that was remarkably watchable. But Mirrors is miles away from watchable. Kiefer Sutherland plays a security guard at an abandoned department store where the mirrors want to kill him. It's a preposterous plot, but one that could be pretty creepy in the right hands, after all, how many times a day do we encounter our reflection, hundreds? But Mirrors doesn't work. It's slow, it's cliche, it has terrible dialogue and wooden acting.
And it often makes no sense. Avoid like the plague.

Street Kings


In Street Kings’ first five minutes, in which Keanu Reeves bursts into a Korean porn dungeon and singlehandedly kills five shotgun-toting bad guys with his pistol, I thought to myself, perhaps director David Ayer should be making video games. Because it’s in video games that we want to see, and to be, all-powerful, invincible and enact a bit of the old ultraviolence. But in a gritty cop drama with aspirations to be taken seriously, many of Ayer’s fantasies of the conflicted supercop come off seeming, well, fantastic.

Street Kings is about hardened supercop Tom Ludlow, LA’s finest. He always gets his man, even if he has to muck the evidence a bit to do it. Ludlow finds out his old partner Washington has been talking to IA and things are not looking good. But before Ludlow can give Washington a swift ass-kicking for ratting him out, Washington is gunned down in cold blood by two guys in a convenience store and wouldn’t you believe it, Ludlow just can't let the murder be buried. He has to find out who killed his ex-partner, even if the corruption takes him back to his own department!

I kind of fell asleep just writing out that scenario, and it isn't much better watching it. Every scene is completely phoned in, writing and acting both, and all of the dialogue is either trite or expository. In a way it's funny, but it's also patronizing. There are no surprises here and if you've seen a few films of this kind, you know how this one ends.

Acting-wise, Keanu gives the same performance he always turns in, Forest Whitaker overacts away what little respect I had for him, and Hugh Laurie as the IA guy is either sleeping through his scenes or laughing inside at what a goof all this is.

David Ayer has yet to make a really good movie but I had high hopes for Street Kings after seeing his directorial debut Harsh Times, which had an original and satisfying story. But he is definitely working backwards with Street Kings. Ayer didn't write this one, it's based on a James Elroy novel, and IMDB tells me that three scriptwriters were mucking about with the screenplay, so it’s possible that with so many cooks in the kitchen the pot got a little overcooked and we wound up with a confusing mess.

Whatever it is, it's not a gritty cop drama, it's too stupid for that. And it's not an action movie, it's too boring.


Revolutionary Road


Revolutionary Road is a polarizing film. Highly rated by many critics, I went in with high hopes and left just wondering why. What did so many high ranking pundits see that I couldn't? When I viewed the film, I found a detached, cold character study with no character development or dimensionality.

The film's plot is old fashioned but strong: Frank and April Wheeler are a young couple who move to the suburbs and have to decide if they strive to realize their dreams or settle for little successes. The characters want more from their lives but are afraid of stepping outside of their comfort zone. A lot of moping and brooding occurs, and a later turn by Michael Shannon as a crazy guy is well played and fun to watch, but feels like a narrative cheat, as he shows up and sums up the film's themes without director Sam Mendes being required to explore those themes with any real nuance.

There is a narrative and aesthetic detachment to these characters that prevented me from empathizing with them and I surmise that the film must be rated highly by people who have projected their own dissatisfaction with life onto the cardboard characters. I understand it was based on a book and that much of it follows that book closely, but a book is not inherently a screenplay.
However, I concede that the art direction is nice.

Playing Catch Up Pt.1

After an extended break due to lack of motivation, I’m back and raring to go. In my time off I’ve written notes on a few films that I’ve seen and thought I’d publish them here without trying to go back and flesh them out too rigorously, as none of them are recent. Most are short, around a paragraph or so, with a few longer ones to come in the second post. Regular length reviews should return next week or sooner.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird


Kim Ji-Woon’s latest, a western about three men fighting over a treasure map, doesn’t waste much time on story or characterization, but as a spectacle it's a lot of fun. Kim obviously knows his way around a camera and the budget is huge, boasting large sets and many violent explosions. Song Kang-Ho as The Weird (Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Memories of Murder) is funny and steals the show as he is wont to do, though much of the humor on display here is very Korean. The action scenes are often breathtaking, though sometimes over-long, repetitive, silly and chaotic. It’s an obvious Leone homage, but it's never meant to be subtle or thought provoking, and I think Kim has too much talent in that department to waste his time on blockbusters. Recommended for fans of Korean cinema only.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D


This by-the-numbers horror flick about a crazed miner is as souless and cardboard as a post- Scream 90s horror film, so if you long for the return of I Know What You Did’s and Urban Legends then this might be a fun diversion. The fun factor of the 3-D and the first couple of scenes have potential, but the film quickly falls apart due to the largely terrible cast and nonsense plot. Still, the 3-D is fun when it works, which is mostly during the many violent death scenes. Recommended for fans of B-grade horror and those who enjoy the new wave of 3-D.

Legendary Assassin


Legendary Assassin is a fun throwback to 80s Hong-Kong action films, meaning it's short on plot, long on action. Still, the set-up for this one, an assassin stuck on an island due to a storm and still carrying the severed head of his mark, is good enough to float the often bad acting and dialogue. Action is good by Jacky Wu, a rising martial arts star in Hong Kong and directing himself here, but an unexciting and melodramatic ending leaves a sour taste. Too bad.

The Wrestler


The documentary-like feel, coupled with Mickey Rourke's empassioned performance as wrestler Randy the Ram, add considerable weight to a well-trod tale of a broken man holding on to his heyday. Aronofsky is definitely out to prove himself after the box-office bust of The Fountain but the film is little more than an indie character piece. See it for the performance.

Hellboy 2


This time around Hellboy is much more of a fairy tale than 50s pulp homage of the first film. It’s almost like watching a mondo documentary, in that you're always waiting to see what strange creature or fantastic locale is on display next. I particularly enjoyed that it was not all about Hellboy this time around, other, often more interesting characters step into the spotlight. Hellboy on his own is sort of one note, and that note was exhausted early in the first film. However, pacing-wise the film can't seem to decide if it is an action film, a comedy or a soap opera, and it doesn't manuever very well among the three.

Wanted


Wanted is a film that thrives, both visually and thematically, on the human desire for fantasy and escapism. It knows what it is and delivers the goods in spades. If you can turn off your brain and just enjoy the story, about a guild of secret assassins that can bend the trajectories of bullets (I know, I know) the actors and action set pieces will capture you. Give it a chance.

The Chaser aka Chugyeogja (2008) Review

What first turned me on to Korean film was the seemingly complete disinterest in Hollywood tropes. What I didn't know at the time was that prior to the mid 90s Korean cinemas showed almost exclusively Hollywood films. After nearly a decade of little to no domestic film success, Korean directors decided to reinvent their national cinema, passing over the glitz and gloss of Western films in favor of the grit and realism of the art-house film. And it worked; Korean-made films began to retake the domestic box office around the year 2000. However, around 2006, at the height of this New Korean Cinema, the revolutionary nature of the industry inexplicably halted. Korean directors began to settle back into safe content, and financiers played it safe with the blockbuster gangster genre or the sappy romance/sex comedy genre.

Amidst all this, The Chaser is a breath of fresh air, and maybe the best Korean film I’ve seen in the past couple of years. But considering the current state of Korean cinema, that doesn’t necessarily make it a resounding success. Just a step in the right direction.

Business is bad for ex-detective turned pimp Joong-ho: his girls keep getting sent out and not returning. Recognizing a pattern in which particular phone number calls the girls before their disappearance, he asks one of his best girls, Mi-jin, to go to the man’s house and text Joong-ho with the address so he can come over and confront the man for stealing his prostitutes. But the man she encounters isn’t a rival pimp, he’s a serial killer named Young-min who traps Mi-jin before she can text her location and graphically attempts to kill her with a hammer.

If this sounds exciting to you, fine. Go see the film already, you’re hooked. But The Chaser is not content to be a routine action film; it is at this point that the film takes a step in a new direction. While disposing of a victim’s car, Young-min gets into an accident with none other than Joong-Ho. Noticing blood on Young-min’s shirt, Joong-Ho chases him down and the two wind up at the police station. Strangely, Young-min doesn’t deny his crimes; he confesses quickly to 12 murders. But he won't say where the bodies are. So while the police fruitlessly question Young-min, Joong-Ho tries to find Mi-jin on his own before the police are forced to set Young-min free for lack of evidence.

It’s an interesting reversal of the genre to have the killer found, but the crime scene hidden, and I don’t feel that it's the only trick up the film’s sleeve. Reversal or no, I found The Chaser often exciting and suspenseful, and at times even affecting. Watching Joong-Ho slowly change from a caricature of a disgruntled pimp, hot-headed and insensitive, into a caring man when forced to care for Mi-jin’s daughter brought his character full circle, and made his efforts to find Mi-jin all the more emotionally felt.

The odd flash of inspired camerawork by first time director Hong-jin Na shows promise, and his decision to play the violence completely straight is more than welcome. Muting the soundtrack to emphasize grunts and the sound of objects on skin and bone made even this old bloodhound cringe a few times. Much less welcome were stray moments of extreme artificiality, particularly the steadfast Korean archetype of portraying the police department as absolutely incompetent, and a few rogue actors who showed the director’s lack of precision.

In the Western press, The Chaser has often been likened to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Memories of Murder, two of the most unanimously praised Korean films of the past five years. Perhaps its unfair to lump The Chaser in with such films; it’s not nearly as well-rounded or thought-provoking, but it is a satisfying and engaging thriller. I’m not terribly surprised to find that there is talk of an American remake with scribe William Monahan, who rewrote China’s Infernal Affairs into Oscar-winner The Departed, at the helm. It’s possible The Chaser is getting a bit of a free pass because the industry has been so stagnant, but minor quibbles aside it is a good film. And it’s really nice to have a good new Korean film. It’s been a while.

The Happening (2008) Review

Watching The Happening brought me back to an experience I remember well from my childhood. Walking into a local video joint, feverish with the excitement of cinematic possibility, and rushing from aisle to aisle, I often would come across something promising and new from a star I was familiar with. Perhaps the cover displayed Jackie Chan or even Steven Seagal; I’m a product of the 80s, after all. I would grab up these straight-to-video films and rush home expecting an Under Siege or a Rumble in the Bronx. Instead I was treated to bad acting, amateur direction and bland dialogue. I had been duped. Certainly these sorts of half-assed cash-ins haven’t disappeared, I’ve just gotten better at avoiding them. But The Happening made it to theaters.

Speaking from a wealth of experience, The Happening is the equivalent of a straight-to-video horror film, ushered to the big screen by a director who could apparently sell a bear the pelt off its back. It’s a baffling picture, and not in the respect it doesn’t make any sense, it’s that I don’t understand how it exists among the scores of respectable films now in theatres.

In New York’s Central Park people suddenly start behaving strangely. They stop what they’re doing and begin to hurt themselves to the point of death. We see construction workers leap off buildings, policemen shoot themselves in the head, and a woman stab herself in the neck with a hairpin. This bizarre behavior is spreading all over the East Coast, and, fearing some sort of terrorist attack, we follow high school science teacher Elliot (Mark Wahlberg,) his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and his friend (John Leguizamo) as they attempt to flee the rapidly spreading “attack.”

Now as a fan of horror, and I have no particular problem with the preposterous nature of the movie. The idea of involuntary suicide is a terrifying enough hook, and a few early sequences are well realized in that respect, even if they are strictly genre fare. But the emptiness with which everyone reacts to the phenomenon, and the subsequent lack of suspense that it brings, leaves the film floundering as we move from location to location outrunning an unseen threat. I considered the possibility that M. Night was trying to say something about our reactions to a terrifying unexplainable attack, but judging by the absurd dialogue, I’d never say these people were meant to be mistaken for realistic.

The dialogue is the top culprit here. M. Night often strives to be eerie and foreboding with wooden speeches and obtuse metaphors, but his cleverness comes off as condescending to any audience member who’s seen a horror film or two. Particularly as we approach the final act, and the entrance of an eccentric recluse who offers to take the protagonists in, the dialogue threatens to careen the picture headfirst into self-parody.

As for as the acting, it's more like overacting. Speaking as someone who tends to respect the work of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, their performances here are career lows. I can’t understand how they came to such terribly zombified performances, as they usually rise above the weaknesses of their lesser pictures, (see - The Big Hit or Hitchhikers Guide).

I feel I should stop at this point; the film isn’t going to get any better for all my whinging, and you certainly get the point that I thought it was terrible.This is the first Shyamalan movie I’ve seen since The Sixth Sense way back in 1999. I’ve managed to avoid his films based on word-of-mouth alone. But the premise and the promise of an exciting genre film fooled me. “M. Night’s first R-rated film!” wasn’t overly bloody by genre standards, and I don’t recall any cursing or sex, so I wonder how much of that campaign was to attract the ever expanding hard-horror audience into the theatre. Like those films in the video store of my childhood, this one had nice packaging but no filling.

A side note: while watching The Happening I was sure I was seeing the worst movie of the year. Then I saw The Love Guru. So I’d like to lessen my distaste for The Happening by about 10% accordingly.

Hancock (2008) Review

More and more I’ve found myself drawn into the spectacle of the big budget summer film. Sometimes the promise of big budget hi-jinks is too much even for this fanatic of the obscure. And after all the bad reviews I’ve heard and read, I want to step up and say, Hancock is not the dud it has been maligned to be.

Surely, I don’t have to tell you much about the plot. You know the story pretty well if you’ve been near a television in the past 3 months, so I’ll be brief. Will Smith plays Hancock, a superhero who has issues. He drinks too much, he’s reckless in his exploits, often causing millions of dollars worth of damage, and worst of all, he doesn’t care if people like him. Or does he? After saving good-natured PR man Ray (Jason Bateman) from a train, (at the expense of the train,) Ray offers to do a little PR for Hancock. You see, Hancock actually does care what people think of him, he just doesn’t know how to show it. So at Ray’s suggestion, Hancock offers himself up to the Los Angeles prison in a gesture meant to atone for the damage he’s caused the city over the years. Their hope is that when crime goes up without him, the people of LA will clamor for his return.

The first half of Hancock is breezy and fun. It plays almost as a send up of the superhero movies we’ve been beaten over the head with over the past few years or so, and it’s a breath of fresh air. Bateman and Smith are well cast: Smith is less goofy than you would expect after watching countless reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or even Men in Black. He plays Hancock as a man detached and cold, and while it’s a similar performance to last year’s I Am Legend, the choice helps create a certain amount of subtle empathy with the character. He makes snarky comments, and they are played for humor, but Smith’s dedication to the character never waivers. As usual, Bateman is the perfect straight man to Smith’s - er - straight man, making jokes so casually it makes you wonder if he’s acting at all. However, Charlize Theron seems a bit lost as Ray’s wife and an even worse mistake was getting Peter Berg to direct.

Berg’s style of verite filming, a mix of zoom-lens and shaky-cam, while perfectly suited to something like Friday Night Lights or The Kingdom, is more of a distraction here than a success. I can see what he’s trying to do: the juxtaposition of verisimilitude with off-the-wall superhero CG destruction sounds interesting enough, but the bombast and silliness of the first half makes it feel cheap. However, the style is much more suited to the second half.

The start of the second half of the film is announced by what everyone wants to talk about: the “twist.” Much has been said about the twist, but I can’t honestly say that the twist is all bad. It just seems to be in the wrong film. In trying to mash in a whole bunch of different plot points, the film forgets about cohesion and character development, which I always thought of as some of Berg’s biggest successes. At a slim 90 minutes, Hancock doesn’t afford itself the time for quick changes of pace and direction without taking the time to earn it, and what should have been an interesting plot point becomes shallow and off-putting.

The original script for Hancock was written over ten years ago, and Berg was quoted as likening it to “a scathing character study of (a) suicidal alcoholic superhero.” While he was impressed with that approach, it was his decision to lighten up the picture in the hope of broadening the audience. Whether or not it was a good idea, it was a decision that wasn’t fully committed to, and that hurt the overall tone of the film. It’s not as if juggling different genres and emotions is impossible or a bad idea. I’ve often lauded Save the Green Planet for being able to juggle horror and comedy seamlessly, but the mix of slapstick and drama here is a bit jarring. Hancock would have been a better film had he stuck to one idea or the other: summer comedy or heavy character drama. Still, like Berg’s other little failure Very Bad Things, it does more right than wrong and my $10.50 was well spent.

The Fall (2006) Review

Tarsem Singh, who prefers just Tarsem, previously made a name for himself in 2000 with his polarizing feature film debut The Cell. It seems that between then and now he has been making numerous commercials and music videos in an effort to finance his dream picture, The Fall. And “dream” couldn’t be a more apt adjective to describe his latest film. Boasting incredible cinematography, majestic sets and costumes, and shot in 28 locations all over the world, The Fall is undoubtedly a visual feast and the epitome of “dream”-like.

The basic plot concerns a young girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) who is staying in a hospital in Los Angeles after a nasty fall in an orange grove has delivered her a broken arm. Exploring the hospital grounds, she soon comes across a stuntman named Roy (Lee Pace) holed up in a room after a fall of his own has left him with a pair of broken legs. Though at first wary of Roy, Alexandria quickly warms to his charm and he begins to tell her an epic yarn about five colorful bandits on an Odyssean quest to kill the evil governor who has wronged them.

The story Roy tells is brought to life with wonderful, and often humorous, live-action sequences in which patients and staff from the hospital appear as veiled variations of themselves. The story progresses and becomes increasingly fantastic, aided in part by Roy’s agitated state and in part by Alexandria’s imaginative contributions. What began as a simple fable is soon a collaboration, and sometimes a battle, between the two to discover the fates of the characters and the world that they have created. If The Fall sometimes resembles a fairy tale, this is a Brothers Grimm tale rather than a Disney one - Roy is not interested in happy endings.

Also like a fairy tale, the story’s moral and its conclusion are somewhat rudimentary, and some critics claim that this unoriginality devalues the film as a whole. Instead, I found that the picture’s simple nature gave it a visceral sort of power. Hidden within the whimsy and beauty we confront sadness, paranoia and a very human struggle to find meaning - universal sentiments that transcend any originality the plot might lack.

The other star of the show, after the vast imaginativeness of the images on display, is the persistent appeal of the girl Alexandria. Played by first-time actor Catinca Untaru, she is so sweet and so real that you can’t help being drawn in by her performance. It is not the saccharine, well-rehearsed cuteness that we are used to with say, someone like Dakota Fanning, but reflects the effortless way in which a child is naturally cute and amusing. So effortless in fact, that at first I was sure that her lines were improvised. Further research reveals that much of the actor’s verisimilitude of innocence derives from the fact that she did not know how to speak English at all. She learned her lines by heart. You wouldn’t know it though, as she stutters, smiles and rubs her nose as she speaks, as if the camera isn’t there, gracefully endearing herself.

Tarsem has created an eccentric and extravagant world, not unlike one from the imagination of Terry Gilliam or maybe Julie Taymor, where suspension of disbelief is created through an unrelenting richness in detail. And as with those indulgent directors, I suspect either you buy into Tarsem’s fantasy or you don’t. But if you manage to let your imagination go, don’t be surprised to find yourself spellbound by the world of The Fall.

One of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Shotgun Stories (2007) Review

Hoo-Boy, sorry about the break. I was on a sort of summer vacation and I didn't meant to neglect you all. Here's a new movie!



I became interested in Jeff Nichol’s Shotgun Stories when I came across an article that mentioned that the film and its style were similar in many ways to the work of David Gordon Green, one of my favorite American directors. Green’s films, which include the Criterion-rewarded George Washington and art-house favorite All The Real Girls, have often been placed in the “Southern Gothic” sub-genre of films and, living most of my adult life in a city, these stories of small towns and simple people hold a certain kind of poetry for me. What I didn’t know was that Green was more than just a creative influence on Nichols, he was a producer on the film. When his name came up as the credits rolled, I let out a thunderous “Ooohhhhhh” and it’s because his influence is heavily felt. Shotgun Stories is a haunting film that effectively explores deep feelings of neglect and revenge.

The story concerns two groups of brothers, both offspring of the same man, in a small town in Arkansas. The patriarch of both families sired first Son, Kid and Boy, so-named because the father was a violent alcoholic who left the boys nameless and alone with their mother, out of selfishness and uncaring. Some time later he renounced all his sins, became a devout Christian, and sired four more boys with a new mother. But he never made things right by his first family. The boys’ mother blaming them for their father’s departure, were taught to hate him and his new family with a vengeance.

This unspoken hatred between new and old families comes to a boil at the funeral for the father, and as a feud escalates, it becomes more and more likely that the memory of this man will be the end of both families.

Normally I would talk first about the film’s successes, before discussing what its failures are, but I found that Shotgun Stories' quirks are its biggest successes. There is very little exposition in the dialogue, which brings out a realness in the characters that is striking, but the film has a way of bleeding out information about characters little by little, and I found myself struggling to understand these people and their intentions. For example, we get to the conflict of the film, the feud, well before we understand the men's lives and backstories.

The gradual revealing of characters' intentions makes them fall victim to a woodenness for the first half of the film, almost as actors in a play. Overwhelmed by the meager background and subtle detail, there are points when we are treated to a few little "slice of life" moments that ring so true and real that I found a smile spreading over my face. But the film’s characters regard these moments as they do everything else in the film: with expressions devoid of emotion. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe this man who died, maybe this whole town, have made Son, Boy and Kid apathetic about everything. The payoff ended up working for me, but its a style that I could see being a turn-off for those with less patience for languid pacing.

Aside from a very nice score and wonderful cinematography of the South, I wanted to make a special mention of Michael Shannon, who I last saw in a fascinating portrait of mental un-health in Bug. In Shotgun Stories he gives a performance as the mumbling, but stoic Son, the oldest of the feuding Hayes brothers. I’m not sure of his range in the long run, (his character in Bug was quite similar,) but it’s a character that manages to just sweat sadness from every pore.

Whether or not you share my feelings on the film’s rewards, it is no doubt a shame that the studios have overlooked the film for so long; the principal photography for Shotgun Stories was done in 2004, and the film was in some sort of studio limbo until late last year. Nichols says in his artist’s statement that his intention was to show that “there is no victory in revenge,” and to counteract the effects of a society that lionizes such acts. While I’m not convinced it’s as unfamiliar territory as Nichols thinks, the real-life tragedy of revenge is painted compellingly in his debut feature.