HOLD THE DARK (US/Switzerland - 2018) Directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Written by Macon Blair. Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgard, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough, Julian Black Antelope, Peter McRobbie, Tantoo Cardinal, Macon Blair, Jonathan Whitesell, Savonna Spracklin, Maureen Thomas, Sean Hoy, Brian Martell, Beckam Crawford. (Unrated, 125 mins) Adapted from William Giraldi's 2015 novel, the bitterly cold and endlessly snowy Netflix Original HOLD THE DARK is the latest bleak, grim thriller from BLUE RUIN and GREEN ROOM director Jeremy Saulnier. It's the filmmaker's most ambitious work yet, with some stunning cinematography by Magnus Nordenhof Jonck, jaw-dropping aerial shots that would look incredible on a big screen, and one of the most masterfully-staged and brilliantly-executed shootouts to come down the pike in quite some time. This long sequence, with its tension escalating to unrelenting terror and punctuated by bursts of shocking and extremely graphic violence, is the centerpiece of HOLD THE DARK and as a result, what follows can't help but pale in comparison, especially since Saulnier and screenwriter Macon Blair (the star of BLUE RUIN and the writer/director of I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE) jettison the more procedural, straightforward plotting of Giraldi's novel to go for something more allegorical and ambiguous. In a way, it's gussying up what could be a 90-minute commercial thriller and turning it into a somber slow-burner that runs just over two hours and veers toward the arthouse, giving it the feel of something A24 would pick and open nationwide just to piss people off. It often doesn't feel too far removed from last year's sleeper hit WIND RIVER, and though it has that distinct sense of Saulnier dread and despair, it could also be seen as what might happen if Taylor Sheridan remade WOLFEN.
In the small village of Keelut in the northernmost reaches of Alaska, three children have been taken away by wolves and are presumed eaten. One grieving mother is Medora Slone (Riley Keough), whose six-year-old son Bailey (Beckam Crawford) is the latest victim. Shell-shocked and alone--her soldier husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard) is in Fallujah and she hasn't yet notified him of Bailey's death--she sends a letter to renowned nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), imploring him to track down and kill the wolf who took Bailey. Core arrives in Keelut and is almost as much of a broken soul as Medora, estranged from his grown daughter and hoping to visit her in Anchorage, where she teaches. There's an interesting subtext to these early scenes that show man is the interloper and wasn't meant for these parts, and while he agrees to track the wolf pack, he reminds Medora that "the natural order of things doesn't warrant revenge." Meanwhile, in Fallujuh, Vernon--after doing something that's the first of the film's many jolting shocks--is sent home after taking a sniper's bullet in the neck, and...
Well, that's about all the plot that can be summarized without going into significant spoilers. In short, Core has been summoned to Keelut under misleading circumstances. There's also, in no particular order, a padlocked cellar housing something unexpected that sends the story in a completely different direction, Vernon's reaction to his son's death sending him on a quest for revenge with his friend and fellow grieving father Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope), the Eskimo locals deeming the "Nordic-looking" Medora possessed by a wolf-demon known as a "tourmaq," and a melancholy Core reluctantly finding himself teamed with Donald Marium (James Badge Dale), the weary sheriff of Emery, the nearest thing resembling a modern town, and under whose jurisdiction Keelut falls. HOLD THE DARK is a film that's not eager to wrap things up in a conventional way, and that sometimes works against it. The ending is ambiguous to the point of frustration, and Saulnier and Blair seem unsure of where to take the narrative after the truly harrowing shootout that rivals anything in GREEN ROOM and is easily the most impressive single sequence of the filmmaker's career thus far. It's admirable that they don't spell things out like the novel did, particularly when it comes to Vernon and Medora's marriage, but there's clearly something "off" from the start, and that's even before a sleeping Core is stirred awake by a nude Medora wearing nothing but a ceremonial wolf mask as she grabs his hand and forces him to choke her. HOLD THE DARK establishes a parallel with the Slones and the wolf pack, and it's interesting to look back at the film once it's over and see how Saulnier and Blair have laid the reveals in plain sight all along. While that makes for some clever twists, it also feels like HOLD THE DARK is trotting out too many enigmatic bells and whistles in an attempt to be more highbrow than it needs to be. That said, what's here is an impressive step up in scope for Saulnier and Blair, and the cast brings their A-game, particularly Wright (why doesn't he get more leads?) and Dale, who's never been better. Part mystery, part culture-clash drama (Cheeon has a serious beef with the Emery police after it took an entire day for them to investigate his daughter's disappearance), and part horror film, HOLD THE DARK sucks you in and keeps your attention, and its strong points far outweigh its occasional hiccups.
LOGAN LUCKY (US - 2017) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Rebecca Blunt. Cast: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Hilary Swank, Seth MacFarlane, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Dwight Yoakam, Sebastian Stan, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid, Farrah McKenzie, David Denman, Macon Blair, Jon Eyez, Deneen Tyler, Ann Mahoney, Jim O'Heir. (PG-13, 118 mins) Steven Soderbergh cried wolf on retiring from feature films a number of times before finally making it official after 2013's SIDE EFFECTS, but he never really went away. He directed HBO's Liberace biopic BEHIND THE CANDELABRA and all 20 episodes of Cinemax's two-season series THE KNICK. He didn't direct the MAGIC MIKE sequel MAGIC MIKE XXL but he served as its cinematographer under his D.P. pseudonym "Peter Andrews" and he edited it as "Mary Ann Bernard." He was also executive producer on other series like Amazon's RED OAKS, Starz's THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (a spinoff of his experimental 2009 Sasha Gray vehicle), and Netflix's upcoming GODLESS, in addition to producing indies like WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN and Spike Lee's DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS. In short, Soderbergh is working more than ever, and with an arsenal of pseudonyms that's approaching Joe D'Amato and Jess Franco levels, his return to the big screen was only a matter of time. LOGAN LUCKY, shot by "Peter Andrews," edited by "Mary Ann Bernard," and written by the unknown "Rebecca Blunt," which is already assumed to be yet another Soderbergh alias, finds the filmmaker in familiar territory, insofar as it's a heist movie that puts it in the same wheelhouse as his OCEAN'S ELEVEN trilogy and OUT OF SIGHT, and like the OCEAN'S movies, it's played for laughs, but Soderbergh's feature film homecoming has some tricks up its sleeve that make it very much its own unique thing.
In his fourth Soderbergh film, Channing Tatum stars as Jimmy Logan, a West Virginia construction worker fired by his crew boss after failing to disclose the bum knee from a high school football injury that ended his once-plausible chances of making it to the NFL. His ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) lives just across the state line in North Carolina and is planning to move with their daughter Sadie (Farrah McKenzie) to Lynchburg, VA, where her wealthy second husband (David Denman) is opening a new car dealership. Jimmy receives little consolation from his younger brother Clyde (Adam Driver), a bartender with a prosthetic left arm in place of the one he lost in Iraq. Clyde reminds Jimmy of the "Logan Curse," which has affected generations of their family, prompting Jimmy to take drastic measures to reverse it. With the help of their baby sister Mellie (Riley Keough), the Logan siblings team up to rob the cash deposit vault of the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the final NASCAR race of the season by taking advantage of the pneumatic tube system that moves throughout and under the speedway via chutes, a system Jimmy discovered on his last job with the construction crew, remedying a series of sinkholes that formed beneath the speedway property. The Logans enlist the aid of appropriately-named explosives man Joe Bang ("introducing Daniel Craig"), and are not deterred by the problematic fact that he's still locked up ("I am in-car-cer-ra-ted!" Bang sounds out for the Logans) for another five months and the job needs to be pulled off before the construction crew completes their work in four weeks.
Other figures drift in and out of the story in inspired, Coen Bros.-like situations, from obnoxious British business mogul and NASCAR team owner Max Chilblain (Seth MacFarlane, looking like a cross between Mandy Patinkin and Avery Schreiber); Dayton White (Sebastian Stan), a Chilblain driver who suffers a bad reaction after being contractually obligated to drink a Chilblain-endorsed energy drink on camera; Joe Bang's lunkhead brothers Sam Bang (Brian Gleeson) and Fish Bang (Jack Quaid); and, much later, humorless, no-nonsense FBI agent Sarah Grayson (Hilary Swank). Soderbergh goes against your gut expectations by avoiding the easy trap of milking these characters for condescending laughs, instead opting for a Coen Bros. approach where he shows much empathy for the Logans, and even for Joe Bang's brothers, who are more the stereotypical hillbilly yokels to a certain degree (they're introduced toilet seat-pitching and bragging that they "know everything there is to know about computers," including "all the Twitters"). Jimmy's plan is ridiculous and damn near impossible but time and again, he, along with Clyde, Mellie, and Joe Bang, prove themselves quite resourceful and have clearly thought this whole thing through even as obstacles constantly threaten to halt the job. The often absurdist humor doesn't approach the lunacy of, say, RAISING ARIZONA, but rather, the more deadpan side of FARGO. Tatum and especially Driver really nail the tone here and are gifted with numerous bits of quotable dialogue. Sure, Clyde's prosthetic arm is played for some easy laughs, but they're great laughs, and one brief detour into a prison riot negotiation (the standoff arranged to get Joe Bang out of jail) between the exasperated warden (Dwight Yoakam) and inmates demanding the prison library stock the titles in the Game of Thrones series that George R.R. Martin has yet to publish is brilliantly funny, as they refuse to believe that the new books don't exist and the warden can't convince them that the TV series has moved past the novels. LOGAN LUCKY could maybe run 15 minutes shorter and it has a few too many characters than it has time to properly showcase (MacFarlane, Stan, and Katherine Waterston as a nurse in a mobile free clinic are barely in it, and Swank doesn't even appear until 95 minutes in), but it's a lot of fun and a reminder that "offbeat" and "quirky" can still be a good thing. Plus it's got one perfect scene involving Sadie and John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," that's maybe the sweetest thing Soderbergh's ever done.
SMALL CRIMES (UK/France/US - 2017) Directed by Evan Katz. Written by Evan Katz and Macon Blair. Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Robert Forster, Jacki Weaver, Gary Cole, Molly Parker, Macon Blair, Pat Healy, Michael Kinney, Daniela Sandiford, Shawn Lawrence, Larry Fessenden, Tara Yelland. (Unrated, 95 mins) Based on a 2008 novel by Dave Zeltserman, the Netflix Original film SMALL CRIMES belongs to that ever-growing post-BLUE RUIN subgenre where names like Jeremy Saulnier and Macon Blair keep turning up (you could also lump BAD TURN WORSE in there, even though it was made by others). Saulnier (GREEN ROOM) isn't involved in SMALL CRIMES, but Blair is, as a co-writer and co-star, just a couple of months after his excellent I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE also bowed as a Netflix Original. Shot in Quebec but set in small-town America, SMALL CRIMES recalls BLUE RUIN more than the visceral horrors of GREEN ROOM or the Coen Bros. aura of the misanthropic I DON'T FEEL AT HOME,. It's more of a character study centered on Joe Denton (GAME OF THRONES' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a disgraced ex-cop who can't stay out of trouble. Dubbed the "Slash Cop" by the local press after a knife attack that left current District Attorney Phil Coakley (Michael Kinney) with significant scarring, Joe has just been paroled after six years in prison, during which time his wife took their two daughters, changed their last names, moved far away, and got a restraining order against her ex-husband. Once he's out, everyone seems to be lining up for revenge, from Coakley's seductive daughter (Daniela Sandiford) to his former partner Lt. Dan Pleasant (Gary Cole), who reminds him that they have some unfinished business. On the take before he was sent to jail, Joe had a side job with Pleasant on the payroll of mob boss Manny Vassey (Shawn Lawrence). Manny is on his deathbed in the last stages of colon cancer, but he's been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury by Coakley. Coakley wants to reopen the investigation into the mysterious "suicide" of a cop who was about to expose Joe and Pleasant's corrupt dealings with Manny, who wants to clear his conscience before he dies. Pleasant tells Joe he needs to whack Manny to kill Coakley's case and make amends for all the trouble he caused him, and once that's done, he'll see about getting him in contact with his daughters, since he's owed a favor by a family court judge he helped cover up a fatal hit-and-run. But killing Manny in a matter of a few days proves virtually impossible, as he's under constant protection by his men and his empire is being run by his hot-tempered, idiot son Junior (Pat Healy), who warns Joe to stay away.
Joe is the perfect kind of antihero for this subgenre: a hapless shit magnet who can't stop fucking everything up. He talks a lot about "second chances" and "making things right," but even he knows he's full of shit. No one knows him better than his tough-love mother Irma (Jacki Weaver), who tells it like it is compared to his more enabling father Joe Sr. (Robert Forster), an arthritic, retired firefighter who just can't say no to his son. But you can see from his mournful expressions and his slumped shoulders that Joe Sr. knows his son is a lost cause. Staying out all night his first day out of jail and drinking at a bar, Joe returns home the next day to scornful criticism from Irma and tries to deflect it by showing off the sobriety chip he received in prison. She calls him out immediately, spitting "You expect me to be happy that you didn't drink while you were in jail?" Joe begins dating Manny's nurse Charlotte (Molly Parker), and the more involved they get, the darker the cloud you can practically see looming over her. Joe may have feelings for her, but first and foremost, he sees her as a way to get to Manny to save his own ass.
Danish actor Coster-Waldau, with a flawless American accent, is very good as Joe, who starts every day with the best intentions but can't maintain the illusion for very long, not even to himself. He's matched by Weaver and Forster (an unsung national treasure), both doing magnificent work as loving parents who can't figure out where they went wrong ("I saw something in you when you were young and I didn't do anything about it," his dad tells him as he's kicking him out of the house, adding "You bring mayhem with you, Joe"). Cole has one of his all-time great "Gary Cole" roles as the sarcastic and ironically-named Pleasant. Whether he's barking out some great quotables ("You're battin' zero, shithead," "Goddamn, I miss high school!" and "Figure it out! Put in some work instead of gettin' your dick wet," when Joe leaves Charlotte's place and tells him he can't get to Manny, and "If you can't clip Manny, clip the mutant," referring to the disfigured Coakley). Cult movie scenesters will also enjoy the brief appearances of Healy (THE INNKEEPERS, COMPLIANCE) and the ubiquitous Larry Fessenden--once a promising filmmaker before becoming the Michael J. Pollard of his generation--as a strip club manager. Director/co-writer Evan Katz (CHEAP THRILLS) lets the proceedings play out at a leisurely pace but, as things are wont to do in creative endeavors involving Macon Blair (who also has a supporting role as the younger brother of the "suicide" cop), things get much more dark and bleak as doomed inevitability runs its course. Even though he spent six years locked up, Joe is the kind of guy who can talk his way out of most dilemmas--dilemmas that he usually creates for himself. But as SMALL CRIMES reaches its legitimately shocking conclusion--the kind of ending that would probably induce an audible collective gasp from an audience if this was playing in theaters--it becomes clear that he's just about exhausted all of his chances and any amount of goodwill even from those closest to him. The story gets a little convoluted at times, especially in the way that Katz and Blair take almost the entire film to really let you in on what Joe did to end up where he is, but when the pieces fall into place, SMALL CRIMES is a worthy addition to the Six Degrees of Saulnier subgenre, if you will, and one of the better Netflix Originals of late.
I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (US - 2017) Written and directed by Macon Blair. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, David Yow, Jane Levy, Devon Graye, Christine Woods, Robert Longstreet, Gary Anthony Williams, Jason Manuel Olazabal, Derek Mears, Myron Natwick, Lee Eddy, Matt Orduna, Macon Blair. (Unrated, 97 mins) "Everyone is an asshole" - Ruth Kimke The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, the Netflix pickup I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (not to be confused with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER or Netflix's I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE) is the directing debut of actor Macon Blair, who should be familiar to fans of the acclaimed Jeremy Saulnier films BLUE RUIN (2014) and GREEN ROOM (2016). Blair (the driven but hapless "hero" of BLUE RUIN and the incompetent manager of the skinhead venue in GREEN ROOM) doesn't deviate too far from the formula of his buddy Saulnier, and ANYMORE certainly belongs in that burgeoning indie subgenre depicting the seedy underbelly of rural and back roads America with Saulnier's films and Zeke & Simon Hawkins' flawed but interesting BAD TURN WORSE (2014). Blair's film takes more of a Coen Bros. approach, especially in the early-going, which is filled with dark humor and occasional bits of cringe comedy to around the midpoint, at which time things get more serious and the humor takes on a decidedly macabre bent that wouldn't be out of place in BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO. Blair wears his love of the Coen Bros. on his sleeve (even the set-up has a shaggy dog-like BIG LEBOWSKI feel to it), so while it doesn't win many points for originality, it has something to say about these troubling times and Blair pulls it off with enough panache that it works beautifully.
Depressed, lonely nurse's assistant Ruth Kimke (a perfectly cast Melanie Lynskey) spends her time moping around the house and reading fantasy novels. She's growing increasingly agitated by the boorish behavior of others, whether it's a huge pickup truck obnoxiously "rolling coal" at a red light, the same neighborhood dog shitting in her yard, people being inconsiderate to others in stores, guys who say "Deez Nuts," and a total stranger (Blair in a cameo) sidling up to her at a bar and spoiling a huge plot twist that's much further into the book she's sitting there reading. Things just get worse when she gets home from work and finds her house has been burglarized, with her laptop, her prescriptions, and her late grandmother's silver dinnerware missing, And with that, Ruth reaches her breaking point, telling her friend Angie (Lee Eddy) that she's tired of "the way people treat each other...they're disgusting and it's all 'mine mine and fuck you,'" adding "Everyone is an asshole." Fed up with lack of interest by the cop assigned to her case, one Det. William Bendix (Gary Anthony Williams), she manages to track down her laptop and cajoles her eccentric neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood)--a would-be martial arts doofus with a rat-tail and a Saxon shirt who's introduced jamming to Pentagram's "Forever My Queen"--into coming along as backup on a mission to retrieve it. But the perps bought it from a flea market, where the skeezy owner Killer Sills (Myron Natwick) has been buying stolen merchandise from Christian Rumack (Devon Graye), a bratty fuck-up from a rich family who's one of a trio of small-time, lowlife criminals that includes ex-con Marshall (Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow) and Dez (Jane Levy of DON'T BREATHE).
Online sleuthing and some good guesswork lead them to the home of Christian's wealthy, obnoxious father Chris Sr. (Robert Longstreet), who's more or less written off his son and refuses to take any responsibility for the shitbag he's become. Marshall has noticed Ruth and Tony following them around and after one major character makes an abrupt and shocking exit, all parties converge at the elder Rumack's house for one of the most inspired and audaciously over-the-top showdowns that the Coen Bros. never concocted, mixing it up with guns, knives, ninja stars, and projectile vomiting. Once it becomes apparent that Ruth and Tony are storming into a world with which they're not prepared to deal, there's some initial trepidation on the part of the viewer over the abrupt shift in tone, but Blair quickly regains control and smooths over the rough spots in the transition. He finds a perfect balance between the more dark-humored elements of Ruth's situation--such as her growing misanthropy and a quest for her belongings not unlike the Dude's pursuit of his peed-on rug in THE BIG LEBOWSKI--and the genuine sense of fear and danger that surrounds Ruth and Tony as they keep tangling with Marshall, whether intentionally or unintentionally. As good as it is, I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE wouldn't work nearly as well as it does were it not for the pitch-perfect performance by Lynskey, who impressed over 20 years ago with her debut in Peter Jackson's 1994 film HEAVENLY CREATURES and here creates a character that's every bit as memorable as her Pauline Parker from that film. Lynskey conveys the frustration, the anger, and the sadness in her character while never overdoing it, and while we never get Ruth's backstory, it's not really needed. She's getting by and she finds fleeting enjoyment in little things, but she's a loner who leads a solitary life and feels isolated from a world that she no longer understands. She gets able support from Wood, who gets to play the more goofy sidekick character but, like his co-star, underplays it for the most part. Where Ruth is a mordant, sad sack Dude, Tony is a more stoical but just as furious Walter Sobchak, again drawing comparisons to THE BIG LEBOWSKI and the Coens, albeit in a more low-key fashion (also worth mentioning is HELLO LADIES' Christine Woods, who steals all of her scenes as Chris Sr's booze-swilling second wife). A funny, twisted, and suspenseful film that goes in some genuinely unpredictable directions, I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE is an impressive debut for Blair, and a perfect showcase for the underrated Lynskey.
GREEN ROOM (US - 2016) Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Macon Blair, Eric Edelstein, Mark Webber, Kai Lennox, Brent Werzner, David W. Thompson, Jake Love, Kyle Love, Samuel Summer. (R, 95 mins) Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier established himself as filmmaker to watch after 2014's gritty revenge noir BLUE RUIN and his latest film, GREEN ROOM, finds him putting his characters in even more dangerous territory with grim and horrifying results. The Ain't Rights--bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin), guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat), frontman Tiger (Callum Turner) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole)--are a small-time, Richmond-based punk band touring the Pacific Northwest in a beat-up van and getting from gig to gig by siphoning gas. When their next show is abruptly cancelled and they're out of money, local zine writer and Ain't Rights superfan Tad (David W. Thompson) hooks them up with a show in the rural outskirts of Portland where his cousin Daniel (Mark Webber) is a bouncer. He warns them that there's a catch: the gig's at the clubhouse of a neo-Nazi stronghold owned by a group of white supremacists who don't take to The Ain't Rights kicking off their show with a cover of Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off." The band play their set and get paid and are packing up their gear to make way for the death metal house band Cowcatcher when Pat goes back to the dressing room to get Sam's phone and finds members of Cowcatcher and bouncer Werm (Brent Werzner) standing over a dead girl with a knife planted in her skull. Bouncer Gabe (Macon Blair, the star of BLUE RUIN) tries to contain the situation after Pat calls 911 to report a stabbing and has the phone taken from him as the rest of the bouncers refuse to let them go, with Gabe politely explaining "We're not keeping you...you're just staying." Gabe and club manager Clark (Kai Lennox) try to contain the situation by having two new recruits stage a stabbing outside in order to get rid of the cops, but when the band gets the edge on bouncer Big Justin (Eric Edelstein), grabbing his gun and barricading themselves in the room, Gabe has no choice but to call owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart), who takes charge and immediately decides the band will have to be eliminated and it has to look like an accident.
One of the more memorable things about BLUE RUIN was the way Blair's hapless, homeless hero tried to be a tough guy but had no idea how to handle any kind of weapon. That's a similar motif that pops up here as the dwindling number of Ain't Rights, accompanied by the dead girl's friend Amber (Imogen Poots), aren't really adept at handling guns and end up resorting to other means at their disposal, like box cutters, machetes, fire extinguishers, mic stands, etc, as Darcy keeps sending his guys into the club to deal with them. It's a survival/siege movie in the classic John Carpenter style (there is a synthy score, but it's very subtle, a surprise given the Carpenter score homages so prevalent in genre fare these days), and Saulnier does a great job of capturing that sense of bleak, claustrophobic hopelessness as the situation gets worse by the minute in one of the scariest clubs you'll see in any movie. Early attempts to run out of the club fail miserably as Darcy has guys waiting behind the door of every room they pass, and even breaking through the floor to Darcy's basement storage area for his cash and the neo-Nazis' heroin business fails to lead them to a way out. The Ain't Rights have no choice but to fight their way out and the results are gruesome and hard to watch. Even the most seasoned gorehound will have a tough time withstanding what happens to Pat's left hand, and when they're forced to work with what's available, a box cutter will certainly disembowel someone or slit a throat. But it's tough-going, and Saulnier assaults you with it so quickly that you don't have a chance to look away.
The Ain't Rights are generally OK, though other than Yelchin, they don't really have much to do but be frantic and try to survive. Outsider Amber is the toughest of the bunch--and she's not with the neo-Nazis but has a specific reason for being there--but even before she's injured, Poots' performance is overly affected and off-putting, almost like she's speaking at half-speed for no reason. She's the major misstep in GREEN ROOM, as Amber is a character who's a fierce, independent badass but Poots is playing her like a tranquilized Aubrey Plaza. The real revelation here is Patrick Stewart like you've never seen him before. Stewart is all calm, soft-spoken menace as the malevolent Darcy, doing whatever he can to keep the cops away from a situation that's spiraling out of control thanks to the resourceful nature of prey he's drastically underestimated ("They're smarter than you!" he shouts at Gabe in his one moment of losing his cool). Stewart is such a beloved, iconic figure that it's hard to get by him playing such a despicable character who says some things it's hard to imagine Patrick Stewart saying, but he makes it work by not overdoing it. Darcy isn't a raving maniac. In fact, he seems oddly detached at times, almost like he just assumes the situation will work itself out, even as more and more of his guys go inside to kill the Ain't Rights but don't come back out. Stewart underplays Darcy, a charismatic leader who can blend into society and be a nice guy on the surface, which makes his being a cold-blooded killer, heroin trafficker, and unapologetic racist and anti-Semite all the more chilling. Like many close-quartered, powderkeg nerve-shredders of this sort, GREEN ROOM works perfectly (Poots' terrible performance aside) until it goes outside, leaving the compound for a conclusion that seems abrupt and a bit unsatisfying given the buildup. Still, for 90% of its duration, it's a bold, brutal, stone cold piece of work, sickeningly violent in all its extreme, hard-R glory and unrelentingly intense in its execution.
