REVIEW: Red State (Kevin Smith, 2011)

In the credits of Red State, Kevin Smith lists the characters by grouping them into categories.  Sex, Religion, and Politics.  Almost all of his characters embody the worst aspects of their respective group.  "Sex" refers to the trio of teenage boys who are sexually anxious, constantly swearing, so eager to prove themselves to each other that they agree to have a four-way with a woman online.  Ew.  Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner, and Nicholas Braun play Travis, Jared, and Billy Ray as helpless horndogs, more pitiable than sleazy, difficult to care for...but after being drugged and bound and ball-gagged and stuck in a cage, sympathy’s easy to come by.

"Religion" belongs to the evangelical gun-nuts headed by Abin Cooper, and Michael Parks makes the role both lionesque and serpentine.  He leads his pride with a triumphant mane of grey hair, and his words slip from his mouth like temptations in Eden.  His speeches might go on longer than necessary, but Parks is so good – the way he cheerily ushers the children out, the switches between doom-saying and warm smiles – that too much is not enough.  Melissa Leo is the only actor in this group to escape his shadow, her fury an effective counterpoint to his confidence, but even she kneels before him and cooks him tea.  It's easy to see how these people could be led to murder.

The government agents ("Politics") assigned to capture the Cooper family fall under the leadership of John Goodman’s Joseph Keenan, and what a relief it is to see him enter the movie.  Like Marge Gunderson in Fargo, he’s a late-film-arrival who’s smarter and more thoughtful than anybody else in the film.  After he speaks with the nervous Sheriff Wynan (Stephen Root, far too blustery), Keenan assembles a support team ready to follow orders.  Keenan's initial desire is to take out the entire Cooper family, but the growing complexity of the situation leaves him uncertain.  In this fight, there's no right thing to do, just varying degrees of wrong.

Previous films from Smith emphasized dialogue over action, but the energy here is palpable, as the film morphs from a horror-thriller into a bleak gunfight, Peckinpah filtered through the gift and curse of modern action editing.  Call it intensified continuity or shakey-cam or chaos cinema, but here, it serves a purpose.  Smith wants his violence to feel ugly and messy, and the newsreel immediacy evokes real-life atrocities like Jonestown and Waco.  There are scenes of sudden, shocking violence in this film that keep the film genuinely on edge, and the editing matches the action throughout.  The camera holds steady on Abin's face during his sermon, while a desperate flight through the Cooper house leaves viewers' eyes racing to keep up.

There are also images of humor and of sick irony, as when a terrified Billy Ray crosses himself before leveling his gun at a door.  There is even a moment that recalls films like The Rapture and Frailty, where viewers have to wonder how God and our world can possibly be reconciled.  But a deus ex machina would miss the point, because Red State wants to challenge the idea of absolute higher power.  Across all three spheres - sex, religion, politics - characters abandon who they are for the certainty of some higher power.  Teen boys follow their hormones.  Believers follow their God.  Soldiers follow their generals.  These are the rules.  These are the groups.  Blue states and red states.  Welcome to America.

RATING: B

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Note: The film's inspired by the Westboro Baptist Church, famous for their anti-homosexual crusade that somehow makes room for picketing Hollywood stars and deceased veterans.  Geoffrey O'Connor and Louis Theroux of the BBC made a compelling documentary about them called The Most Hated Family in America.