lewisb548
Posts: 111
Joined: 24/2/2011
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I'm a big fan of Smiths earlier work ranging from Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy to Zack and Miri make a porno, but when Smith announced he was making a horror film, I was intrigued so much so that I waited in anticipation for the release of Red State.
After watching the trailer I was expecting a sort of torture porn, crazy christian movie, but too be honest there is little to no gore in Red State, other than a few executions, I would have thought Smith could be more inventive with his death scenes. In fairness to Smith there is some solid material here ranging from a twisted sermon from a crazy bastard Abin Cooper, played brilliantly by Michael Parks, his performance was so convincing I dont ever want to meet him, Mellissa Leo plays his daughter, truth is she's great at playing shouty, violent bitches.
The story is weird, fair enough but the acting is so good I don't care.
Three kids looking online find a sexy milf who's up for some fun, they decide this is the perfect opportunity to get some pussy, the trouble is when they meet the girl, she is old and decrepid but her tits are big, oh well! The three of them then get drugged by her and wake uo at the mercy of Cooper who makes them and the viewers sit through a twisted sermon, nothing wrong with the sermon other than the fact its disturbing but like A clockwork Orange is interesting and disturbing at the same time.
The sermon talks of Homosexuality, murder, and of how God is a violent bastard who hates everyone. I myself believe in god, I just dont believe he is as evil and twisted as the christians in this movie. Over the years we have been subjected to Crazy christians who justify their evil actions of murder upon innocents by using their religion as an excuse. The mist for example we were treated to Mrs.Carmody, now we are subjected to Abin Cooper ranting on about homosexuality. In fairness to this movie it was well cast and the teens themselves are a likeable, even lovable bunch.
And like almost every character in Smiths movies, their obsessed with sex and talk about it constantly yet they never get laid, the teens also have a tendency to swear a lot, so now I have two things in common with them.
The teens after the sermon are forced to witness an execution of a homosexual man, the teens are so shocked they decide to no longer put up Coopers bullshit and they try to escape, gunshots alert a policeman, and when Coopers men shoot him too death, the sherriff gets involved and the police call in the help of John Goodman a skilled negotiator who is enforced with the task of telling his men they have to kill everyone in Coopers large house/church. Awkward for the teens who are now hostages.
When Goodman arrives he adds a sense of fun to the film and Smith squeazes about every ounce of dry, bad taste humour out of shocking situations, which makes the fact the jokes are funny even more shocking.
Things turn into a real shoot em up near the end of the film and too be honest I wouldn't class Red State as a horror film, in fairness to Smith I loved this movie, but if charcters I liked survived the film I would have bought this on DVD but no its a one time watch for me, that watch being tonight when I watched it surprisingly good quality online.
The problem with Red State is that it is poorly executed, mainly because every character I like dies.
First of all characters I like:
Kevin Pollaks random swat team guy, John Goodman as the well meaning swat guy, Random agent who tries to help but gets shot by Mellissa Leo, some of the other swat team guys, Michael Angarano as one of the teens Travis, the other two teens BillyRay and Jared played by Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun plays Billy Ray, I liked the first cop too get shot aswell as John Goodmans wife, the kids at the teens school, their teacher, John goodmans wife. Quite a list, huh? other than that the voice at the end of the film,
Everyone else: Hated them.
All in all this was a good movie but its a shame almost every character I like gets shot.
8.5/ 10, great acting and writing, poorly executed conclusion and awful choice of who lives and dies. Decent flick though.
A warning, this isn't a horror movie but the ending is hillarious, Cooper is in jail for life ranting on an on to himself, but another prisoner voiced by Kevin Smith shouts "shut the fuck up!!!" Red State is hardly character driven film making, the three teens the apparante main characters of the film get very little focus and when they do they usually end up getting, frightened, shot at chased or usaully killed. Bringing John Goodman into the mix shifted the focus and added some dry humour and a decent firefight but Smiths lack of attention towards his own characters is mind numbingly annoying.
This film has made me so wary of christians.
P.S. God isn't as big an asshole as Cooper puts him out to be.
But he's still an asshole.
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Red State - 
Whatever that means. I was looking forward to this, so it's defo don't stray into horror at all?
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