> REVIEW
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Red State (2011)
No more Mr. Funny guy…
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By Conor Hunter | September 2011
The Harvey Boys/Smodcast Pictures©
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith is a writer and director most famous for his Askewinvese films, a set of cult comedies set within the same diegetic world, filmed on shoestring budgets and based around hilarious characters and witty dialogue.
However, Smith has also made a number of high budget ‘straight’ genre films. These began with the critically panned romantic comedy Jersey Girl (2004), starring real-life couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Unfortunately, this was an omen of things to come and the follow-up, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) provided Seth Rogen with his worst ever box-office opening. Then there was the aptly titled, Cop Out (2010).
Red State is the fourth of his films not set in the Askewinverse, and unfortunately, it does nothing to buck the trend. The film revolves around the Five Points Church, a hybrid of The Westborough Baptist Church and The New Davidians. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with these groups, as neither is one of the girls in the opening high-school scene, conveniently allowing the rest of the class to provide us with lengthy expositional dialogue on the church and its leader – Abin Cooper.
Cooper is played by Michael Parks, who is introduced to us in an excruciatingly long soliloquy that will have you feeling like you are watching an evangelical channel on cable TV. Parks puts in a painfully dull and uninspiring performance, worlds apart from George Carlin’s charismatic and ironic Cardinal Glick in Smith’s earlier film Dogma (1999).
The first half of the film makes an attempt at horror. At least, that’s what the pounding music suggests with a death scene that provides the most visually interesting aspect of the film. However, as the audience has no real empathy towards any of the characters, it has about as much emotional impact as watching an abattoir slaughter.
The introduction of John Goodman as a ‘Fargoesque’ local cop thrown into an extreme situation signals the second act which essentially re-enacts the events at Waco. Smith portrays the government forces as underhanded and dangerous, but as he has spent the first half of the film demonising members of the Five Points Church, the audience is forced to sit through a long drawn-out siege in which they feel no empathy for either side.
The original scripted ending may have made the audience think that the film was not a complete waste of 88 minutes of their life, but budget restrictions have given it the same fate as Fatal Attraction, I Am Legend and The Butterfly Effect. What we are left with is The Usual Suspect if everyone stopped caring about Keyser Soze ten minutes into the film.
The truth is stranger than fiction and in this case the truth is also more emotional, more disturbing and more cinematic than fiction. Anyone interested in the themes explored by this film would find their time spent far more effectively watching Waco: The Rules of Engagement or Louis Theroux: The Most Hated Family in America.
Script…………………………………………………………………………………………….
Hard to believe that the man responsible for Clerks (1994) and Chasing Amy (1997) wrote this. A transcript of a real evangelical nutcase would be more entertaining. 1
Direction………………………………………………………………………………………..
A complete shift in focus half-way through makes it feel like Smith has crashed
two completely different films into each other, both of them awful. 1
Verdict…………………………………………………………………………………………..
The only good that can come of this film is if Smith loses so much money, he is
forced to make his next feature on a small enough budget to focus his mind back
on clever dialogue and characterisation. 1
