Green Room

This is another film that I previously covered in a Wednesday Review. In that review I talked about it primarily as a dilemma set up in the manner of Hitchcock. Rewatching it, however, I was more inclined to see it in more human terms. The movie doesn’t simply present us with a logic puzzle to solve, but with people who are trying to navigate their situation, their convictions, and their underlying morality.

A punk band called the Ain’t Rights are in the middle of their “tour,” siphoning off gas to keep their van going, when they find themselves at a dead end. Their next stop was canceled, and the only show available to them in the State is a Nazi bar. So, they take the job.

What impresses me the most about this film is the decision to heavily humanize the Nazis. This doesn’t make them any less intimidating, but it does make the film seem like a real conflict. These aren’t supervillains in their lair, or automatons who exist only to die at the hands of our heroes. They’re individuals who share a common, if deranged, ideology.

If there’s a defining moment for the Nazis as a group, it’s when the band goes onstage and sings “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” by the Dead Kennedys. A bottle or two are thrown, and some of the skinheads look outraged. Others, however, actually look on with admiration, or even laugh.

The conflict is created by a single, stupid event. The band are told not to return to the club’s Green Room because the headliners are preparing. But Sam (Alia Shawcat) left her phone charging, and Pat (Anton Yelchin) runs in and sees a dead body lying on the floor. From there, the band find themselves being held by a man named Big Justin (Eric Edelstein) along with friend-of-the-corpse Amber (Imogen Poots). The remaining members are Tiger (Callum Turner) and big guy-extraordinaire Reece (Joe Cole).

The Nazis, however, make the mistake of assuming Big Justin can keep the situation under control behind a locked door with a single gun, dealing with five people who all assume they’re going to die anyway. This is obviously a mistake, and in an effort to get the band out of the room the club’s owner Darcy (Sir Patrick Stewart) orders Justin to unload the gun and hand it to them. The situation is quickly reversed, with Justin as a hostage.

From that point onward the movie becomes a gigantic chess game. Obviously, the skinheads could just break down the door, storm the room, and kill them all. However, the band performed in front of dozens of witnesses, so their bodies have to be found with an explainable cause of death. Furthermore, they’re not eager to charge people with a loaded gun, competent to use it or otherwise.

Likewise, the band finds itself struggling to think of any realistic scenario in which they don’t all die horribly. Attempting to dig through the floorboards just leads them to a heroin lab, making them even more threatening witnesses. When negotiations are attempted Pat nearly looses his hand, and the “Red Laces” (skinheads who shed blood) are able to take back the gun.

Over the course of the movie we eventually get three escape attempts. The first two are utter failures in which the Tiger, Sam, Reece, and eventually Nazi-defector Daniel (Mark Webber) are all killed. At the same time, however, one of the Nazis’ attack dogs is mortally wounded, and more significantly the loyalty of Darcy’s minions begins to come into question. Aside from Daniel’s defection, a bouncer named Gabe (Macon Blair) becomes increasingly disturbed by the whole affair.

With the cast finally whittled down, Amber and Pat are able to stage a final confrontation in which they take two Red Laces off-guard by acting like complete lunatics. Killing someone who’s afraid of you is one thing. Killing someone with his face painted, who’s banging a machete wildly and screaming that he’s Odin is quite another.

After the Laces are dead, Gabe surrenders to the two, and they go to confront Darcy and his remaining skinheads while Darcy’s gang are in the process of setting up the bodies of their friends as trespassers killed when they attempted to siphon gas. Taken by surprise, the Nazis die, and Amber and Pat sit down to contemplate. Honestly, Patrick Stewart has the single greatest death scene I’ve ever seen. He literally turns to walk away moments before death, as if to say that his killers are not important enough to disrupt his routine.

I mentioned in my original review that I had a problem with the ending. I have now changed my mind on that. I mentioned the mortally wounded dog before. Through the last act of the film that dog is wandering through the woods, and we periodically cut back to him. We’ve even been told by his trainer (Kai Lennox) that the dog should die killing, and said that his attack word is “Fass.” So, naturally, we expect him to kill someone at the end.

So, in the final moments of the movie, the dog walks past Amber and Pat. They open fire, but are out of bullets. The dog lays down next to his apparently-dead trainer, and we brace ourselves for the final whisper of “Fass”...and it never comes. In the theatre I was furious, but honestly I can’t imagine anything would have had a stronger impact on me than those final moments. This wasn’t a mistake on the part of the filmmakers, they knew my anticipation, and they chose not to give me what I wanted because they wanted me pissed off. It was the most palpable reaction they could hope for.

To talk briefly about the characters, Darcy kills it. He’s a businessman who somehow strikes a balance between vicious, likable, and loyal. As of the end of the film the man remains something of an enigma to me, and I’m really uncertain if he’s a deeply loyal member of his own movement, or a cult leader guiding sheep. Either way, he’s an effective villain.

Amber functions well as a foil to all the others. She tells us that she’s “not a Nazi,” and her ideology is only discussed briefly. At some point she was the victim of violence by a person of color, and so she hangs out with racists. She’s a vicious person, who comes after Darcy and his men for pure revenge, and as with Stewart I’m not sure how much I really know about her. She could be a sociopath, or she could just be a damaged person trying to not be hurt again.

Finally, Pat is just one member of the ensemble for most of the film, but makes a great foil for Amber in the final conflict. He varies between badass and uncertain. Where she chooses to confront Darcy simply to kill him, Pat had hoped at least one of his friends might still be alive. While he makes it clear in the confrontation that he’s not messing around, it’s Amber who decides that murder is the best option after the Nazis have been disarmed and are at gunpoint.

Green Room is an awesome movies. These are awesome actors. Patrick Stewart is a legend. Anton Yelchin died too soon. Peace out.

Wednesday Review: Green Room

(First Wednesday Review in over a month.  I'm so happy!  There's been a serious drought of new horror.)

If you cloned Alfred Hitchcock and raised the clone on a mixture of Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, I think that child might grow up to direct something like Green Room. It combines a Hitchcockian formula with a healthy dose of gore. The characters are clearly established, they're put into a scenario in which their options and information are both limited, and then they're chopped into tiny pieces for the amusement of the audience. This is the type of movie where we're constantly kept up to date on the number of bullets in each gun, but when those bullets are fired we get the blood. It's a strange mixture of intellectual and savage.

Our set-up sends a down-on-their-luck band to a bar for neo-Nazis and other racist trash. Unfortunately, they end up witnessing a dead body, and find themselves locked in the bar's Green Room (the room for bands to prepare before they go onstage, something I was previously unaware of) with a loaded gun but not cell phones, and another witness who they may or may not be able to fully trust. Obviously, the Nazis want the matter covered up, and can only be assured of that if they're all dead. So, the situation turns into a stalemate.

I was excited to see Patrick Stewart in this movie as the Nazi leader, and he does not disappoint. Based on the trailer I thought he would be attempting an American accent, but I was wrong. Instead we get a British accent that becomes more or less pronounced depending on whether or not his character wants to project himself as the voice of reason, or the brute, at a given moment. It's an effect I love.

Director Jeremy Saulnier has referred to this as the third in his “Inept Protagonist Trilogy,” however I personally don't see it as such. I've only seen the first of those three films, Murder Party, and that film featured a true idiot as a hero who mostly sat back and watched the villains destroy themselves. Here, the protagonists make mistakes not out of true stupidity, but out of desperation. There are a number of times when the villains drastically underestimate them.

I don't want to spoil too much in this review, although I fully expect to write a full regular review eventually. Suffice it to say that, aside from a minor quibble with the ending, the story does not disappoint. Every plot point is set up in proper Hitchcock style, and every twist works with what the movie has established. The movie gives us all the information, but then still finds ways to surprise us. If you can handle the gore, see it.