Red State

Red State screens at Cineplex Theatres across Canada tonight, Thursday, September 29^th, at 7pm. Visit www.cineplex.com for participating theatres.

For all of the hemming and hawing that has been done over writer-director Kevin Smith’s latest self-aggrandizing opus, it’s a bit heartening to say that the hype has been somewhat justified. I should also point out that I don’t necessarily mean “self-aggrandizing” in a bad way. I see Smith as the kind of showman and personality that the film world almost needs at this point. In world where so many filmmakers are so bland that they almost don’t warrant talking about, there is something refreshing about a man who both tries so desperately to be adored and at the same time could give a fuck less what anyone thinks of him. Smith pushes himself to make what is essentially a Coen Brothers-lite film with Red State, a sprawling and intermittently ungainly look at a fundamentalist Christian church involved in some unconscionable dealings with locals in nearby towns.

The film is actually three films in one. It starts with three horny high schoolers as they attempt to get laid by a horny housewife (Melissa Leo) living in a trailer that they met online. Faster than you can say Hostel (but without all the icky connotations that film seems to represent with regard to American culture), the three young men are captured by the people of Cooper’s Dell, a group of true believers lead by the loquacious Abel Cooper (Michael Parks), and are subsequently punished for their potential transgressions.

The second part of the movie deals with the church trying to keep their dirty dealings under wraps as the one remaining teen (Michael Angarano) attempts to escape the compound. Things go horribly awry, which leads into the third film, involving a siege at the compound between Cooper’s followers and an ATF task force headed up by John Goodman.

Smith the director seems reenergized by the chance to do something different than he is usually known for, but as a writer he is on uneasy footing. He eases his faithful followers into the coming changes by opening the film with some typical Smith style dick and pussy jokes before abandoning them entirely about 20 minutes in (before shoehorning in an entirely unnecessary Clerks reference). That is when the obvious Coen Brothers influence takes over since every starts talking like they are in Miller’s Crossing or Fargo. He tries, but he just can’t get the rhythms of the dialog right. He made the smart move of casting Goodman as the person who has to deliver the preponderance of backstory the film has (which is usually what the Coens hire him for in the first place), but he lacks the ability to be succinct. A lot of the film is all talk and no show, especially the film’s conclusion, which only barely works because Goodman is front and centre for the entirety.

Visually, this might be Smith’s most accomplished film, but it is marred by Smith’s editing which could stand to be a bit tighter and more focused. Like so many other filmmakers who have given in to the digital revolution, Smith has freed himself to do projects that he wants to do that he might not have had a chance to make otherwise. The RED camera shot footage has a bleached out quality that is nothing new to behold, but it serves the story here quite well.

Smith also shows that he really does have a way with actors, and his cast commits to the project fully. Parks is given a chance to shine with a lengthy speech that Smith lets drag out to over five minutes in length. The aforementioned Goodman is the person who really steals the show here, though, while Oscar winner Melissa Leo attacks a role that is essentially the inverse of the near trailer trash roles she played in Frozen River and The Fighter with great tenacity and fervour.

It’s all wonky and a bit overly ambitious, but for what it’s worth Red State isn’t all that bad. The film works for what it is trying to do and it has an amiable Grindhouse style quality that would have made it an oddly better pairing with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror than Tarantino’s dreadful Death Proof. In the end, however, the only person really breaking any new ground here is Smith and it’s really only on a personal level. It’s pretty mediocre, but at least it isn’t inherently forgettable.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2