Review of God Bless America (2012) by Mike C — 02 Aug 2012

Bobcat has done some brilliant things. After the awful Shakes the Clown, he wrote and directed Sleeping Dogs Lie, a pretty brilliant movie, especially considering its story line. Then he did World's Greatest Dad, an even more brilliant dark comedy about, well, all kinds of crazy stuff. This, his fourth real film, seemed to have more promise than both Dogs and Dad. Unfortunately, the movie could not deliver the message. Probably even more unfortunate, some fuck shot up a theater in Colorado, not unlike in this movie, shortly after its DVD release.

Though the message is not overly clear in the movie...in the end, there is way more shooting than there should be, etc, it's pretty clear: we've become a nation of lame assholes. The tv shows we watch (and create), the constant advertising, the lack of respect for others, etc, etc. Well, this guy gets fed up with it. Thinking he has an inoperable tumor, he decides to just start shooting people who are less than good human beings. It's a tough task. Quite ballsy. No writer wants to inspire a shooting spree. But how else can he tell that story? That said, the movie takes some of the characters overboard to make their killing more...cheerful (much as he did in Dad with the asshole kid). He even makes a stop in Topeka to take care of those Phelps fucks!

The movie just kinda made me sad. Obviously, you can't just go around shooting people. But how did we get like this? How do we fix it? I think the movie can succeed at making depressed people say Yeah, that bastard deserved it! But life is not that easy. The world is full of assholes and crooks. We've managed to deal with thus far. As they grow in intensity and number, it gets more and more difficult to deal with them, but if you start shooting, I think you quickly climb the list of assholes.