By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1 cat
Director: David Burris
Starring: Adelaide Clemens | Haley Joel Osment | Jeremy Irvine | Minka Kelly | Noah Wyle | Steve Earle
Country: united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 119
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2420166/combined
Kyle says: “‘Violence begets violence,’ says Leonard, the character portrayed by Noah Wylie, whom we know is sensitive because he listens to Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’ but nonetheless picks up his rifle whenever the dog barks or the sound of a car or truck intrudes upon the silence of his trailer. He upbraids Travis, the character portrayed by Jeremy Irvine, for wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the Confederate flag, the meaning of which Travis has not thought about. Standing on the site of a Civil War massacre that included a 12-year-old boy to whom the modern teenager is related, he says, ‘You know a place is haunted when it feels more real than you are’. I found myself longing for the hand of someone dead for 150 years to reach out of the sod and start strangling both of them.
“You could make a long list of the idiocies of yet another terrible movie about small towns in the South, their customs and legacy, but why would you want to? The director’s notion of establishing atmosphere is with shots of trees and clouds between scenes, of delineating emotional imbalance with a growling and threatening drone on the soundtrack. The teenage Travis knows to bring an axe to steal a mature marijuana plant from the local drug lords, but not enough to avoid the bear trap next to it. The pot farmer who threatens Travis with death if he reveals the business to police, does a show-stopping rendition of ‘Poor Wayfaring Stranger’ at the local fair, but then goes off with Leonard’s drug-addicted girlfriend, whom he beats up.
“Both Jeremy Irvine and Noah Wyle look like deer in the headlights about to be run over by a pickup truck, but perhaps the director intended that. One might wonder why people make such terrible movies, but no one ever ventured to create anything less than an award-worthy enterprise. As for the connection between the ancestors of Leonard and Travis, there is a sign commemorating the massacre of 13 men and boys in 1863 because they were ‘suspected of Unionism’. Perhaps that is what defenders of the Confederate flag mean when they maintain it is not about racism, but about the preservation of local history. The violent ending of the movie fulfills Leonard’s statement earlier at the site of the massacre: ‘It’s like, time doesn’t pass; it just layers over things. It’s all still happenin’ underneath the surface of what we see’. 1 cat
“Seen Monday, August 10, 2015, on Netflix, New York.”