Review of Red White & Blue (2010) by Chris S — 30 Apr 2011

Rarely is a film able to be both enticing and disturbing. There have been some pretty messed up films the past few years like Antichrist and A Serbian Film. Other than Antichrist having gorgeous cinematography, genital mutilation is probably what you'll take away from it while A Serbian Film shows you the affects it could have on someone forced to make a snuff film against their will. I Saw the Devil is a great example of being both brutal in content and absolutely engaging thanks to fantastic performances and a well-thought-out revenge plot. Now imagine having the last act of a film containing subject matter as unnerving as the violence in I Saw the Devil but leaving a little more to your imagination while the first two acts remind you of something straight out of an Alejandro González Iñárritu film and you've got Red White & Blue in a nutshell.

When Red White & Blue first gets going, you probably won't really know what to think. Some chick is just running around having sex with a handful of various men every night? So what? But it's deeper than that. Once Nate (Noah Taylor) enters the picture, things begin to get a little more interesting. Does Nate really seem like the type of guy to get honorably discharged from the army, get an offer for a CIA job, and spend his time thinking it over while working at a home improvement store? You'll have to be the judge of that yourself. His admiration for Erica (Amanda Fuller) is one of the driving factors of the film though. Then Franki (Marc Senter) works his way into the equation, as well. He thought he was having a one-night stand with Erica that no one would ever know about, but it turned into something that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Franki is in a band with his three best friends that seems to be on the up-and-up while his mom is battling cancer, but things begin to go downhill at a rapid pace once Franki's girlfriend reveals she cheated on him. An unflinching drama slowly snowballs into a revenge thriller that'll jump to the next scene right when you're on the verge of cringing.

The film does a fantastic job of reeling you in and making you care about these characters over the course of its hour and forty minute duration. Amanda Fuller plays up Erica having intimacy issues to near perfection as her awkward body language and inability to fight off bursting to tears whenever a man wants to do anything more with her than have sex defines her character far more than simple words ever could. Noah Taylor's Nate is a bit of a mystery. He comes off as odd at first, but he becomes a man on a mission. He'll go to great lengths to get what he wants and his savagery along with his brutality easily makes his performance the highlight of the film. Marc Senter's disturbing and mesmerizing performance in The Lost made a fairly long-lasting impression on me. At least long enough for me to recognize him in this film. Franki is a similar character and Senter's performance is just as captivating despite how deranged his character really is.

Red White & Blue will more than likely make you go through a wide spectrum of reactions. It'll start off with a "What the hell is this?" that'll transition to, "Damn, and I thought I was a jerk," before ending with, "So yeah, gangbangs probably aren't a very good idea..." The film takes an engrossing story and manages to tell it by encompassing several different genres; drama, mystery and thriller with a few horror elements for good measure. Add a fantastic cast that works as a cohesive unit that also doesn't allow for any hiccups and you've got one helluva film on your hands. Red White & Blue is some of the best storytelling to be told on film in quite some time.