Movie Review: Donnybrook

Donnybrook * ½ / *****

Directed by: Tim Sutton.

Written by: Tim Sutton based on the novel by Frank Bill.

Starring: Jamie Bell (Jarhead Earl), Frank Grillo (Chainsaw Angus), James Badge Dale (Whalen), Margaret Qualley (Delia Angus), Chris Browning (McGill), Adam Bartley (Done), James Landry Hébert (Poe), Pat Healy (Eldon), Alexander Washburn (Moses), David Myers Gregory (Percel).

 

When the name of your two lead characters are Jarhead Earl and Chainsaw Angus, you should probably be aware that what you’re making is a B-movie. When the plot involves the pair of them making their way to what is essentially a bare knuckles version of WWE’s Royal Rumble in the middle of a forest, you should definitely be award that you’re making a B-movie. And when you have a scene in which Chainsaw Angus tells his sister, Delia, to not just kill a man – but kill him as you are having sex with him – and do it at the exact moment when he climaxes, which we see play out, you should undeniably know that you are making a B-movie, and an exploitive one at that. There is nothing wrong with B-movies, ones that mix sex and violence in interesting, disturbing, entertaining ways. Some of my favorite films are B-films. And some of those B-films also have something interesting to say – something that they probably couldn’t get across in a non-genre film, because audiences would react poorly to that. These movies often do. But what you cannot do – or at least shouldn’t – is make a film like Donnybrook, which is basically a violent exploitation flick, drain all the fun out of it, make it a study in miserabilism, and also think that you are making some grand statement about life on the margins in today’s America. That’s a recipe to end up with a film like this – a sluggish bore of a film – albeit one made with skill by director Tim Sutton, and featuring a pretty good lead turn by Jamie Bell. It’s just not a film that works in the way they want it to.

 

In the film, Jarhead Earl (Bell) and Chainsaw Angus (Frank Grillo) are enemies, basically because (it seems anyway) that Chainsaw Angus is a drug dealer, who keeps selling to Jarhead Earl’s wife, who wants to kick, but cannot. They get into a fight in the film’s opening scene – although it’s not much of a fight to be honest, as Chainsaw Angus makes quick work of Jarhead Earl (no, I’m not going to stop using their full names). Chainsaw Angus’ partner is his sister, Delia Angus (wait a minute, I’m just realizing now that Angus is Chainsaw’s last name) – played by Margaret Qualley in one of the most thankless roles I can imagine. There is some sort of weird unhealthy incestuous vibe (as opposed to a healthy incestuous vibe) between the pair of them – but after that moment mentioned in the above paragraph, when Chainsaw Angus makes her have sex with a creep played by Pat Healy (who, as always, is fine as a creep) and shoot him as he’s cumming their relationship gets strained. She meets Jarhead Earl out on the road – he’s running away from the law with his family, although he leaves his wife and daughter, but brings his 8-year-old son along with him (as one does, when travelling to a bare knuckle cage match) on his way to the Donnybrook – which he says far too often. Chainsaw Angus isn’t far behind them – and looking for vengeance. I get why he’s mad at Delia, but what he does to Jarhead Earl doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Oh, I almost forgot, there’s also Whalen (James Badge Dale) – a corrupt local law man after both of them.

 

Donnybrook is a miserable film – literally, it is miserable. Every character in the film is miserable from the beginning of the film to the end of the film. The violence in the film is pretty consistent, and bloody as hell at that. Everyone in the film, takes a beating, and then just keeps right on going anyway. Considering the film is called Donnybrook, it’s more than a little surprisingly that we wait about 85 minutes of a 101 minute film before we even get to the aforementioned Donnybrook. This can work in some cases – look at Brawl in Cell Block 99 – which takes use about two hours to get to Cell Block 99, and another 20 minutes before a brawl there happens to occur. Here though, it’s all just an excuse to parade around miserable people, looking miserable. The movie beats you over the head with its “point” for almost its entire runtime – and just in case you don’t get it, has a character just out and out say it in the film’s final scene.

 

The film was directed by Tim Sutton – who has undeniable talent. I really disliked his last film as well – Dark Night – which was a tone poem of sorts leading up to an event inspired by the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting. Again, that film was well made – as this one is – but also completely misguided. That film felt like pure exploitation of a tragedy. Here, he’s just wallowing in misery. The film is extremely violent and sexual, sometimes in ways that make you uncomfortable (I’m not entirely sure deliberately, but whatever). I don’t really have a problem with that. It’s also so incredibly boring, which is worse, and makes the mistake of thinking that anything this “dark” is more “real” – and that it has something important to say. It doesn’t.

Movie Review: Dark Night

Dark Night * ½ / *****

Directed by: Tim Sutton.

Written by: Tim Sutton.

Starring: Eddie Cacciola (Veteran), Anna Rose Hopkins (Summer), Robert Jumper (Jumper), Aaron Purvis (Aaron), Kirk S. Wildasin Iii (Little boy). 

 

Back in June, when I did my list of the 25 best films of the 21^st Century so far (inspired, like so many, by the New York Times doing the same thing) one of the films I listed was Gus Van Sant’s Elephant – which was his film about a school shooting not unlike Columbine. Made just 4 years after Columbine – at a time where it seemed like every week brought another school shooting (it doesn’t seem to have stopped, as much as morphed – it’s no longer just schools that are the targets of these mass shooting events) Van Sant’s film offers no reasons, no explanations, no comfort to the audience. He depicts a day at a high school, like it was any other day, except that the end of the film has two boys storm the school and kill many of their classmates. The film was controversial at the time for many reasons – one of them was the style of the film – which was basically made up of long, flat, tracking shots – made the events look calm or even beautiful, and Van Sant did nothing different for the normal scenes as he did the shooting scenes. That was, of course, part of his point – and even though Van Sant does depict the violence, it’s impossible to argue he glamorizes it. The violence has no sense of cathartic release, or even visceral power. It’s drained of that. Director Tim Sutton says he was heavily inspired by Van Sant’s Elephant when making his film, Dark Night, which is his take on the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting. His film is more stylized than Van Sant’s – and as an example of film craft, the movie is quietly remarkable. And yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling throughout the film that Sutton is guilty of many of the things that Van Sant was accused of, but I didn’t think he did. Dark Night felt more exploitive and judgmental than Elephant did – and also feels like a film that Sutton is congratulating himself for making as he’s making it. The whole thing rang hollow to me.

 

The style of the film is somewhat confusing. It is going for a vérité quality in most of its scenes – although there are moments that resemble a more traditional documentary – as the filmmakers are interviewing their subjects (why they are interviewing them is never answered) – and there is even a fantasy sequence at one point. Mostly though, the film follows its characters, who are mostly leading quiet, lonely, melancholy existences – isolated, or self-isolated, from those around them. Unlike Elephant, which never tried to hide the identities of the would-be shooters, Dark Night doesn’t tell you until the end – and actively tries to misdirect your suspicion throughout the movie. Will the lonely teenage artist – who has given up his passion, and answers questions with as few words as possible snap, and kill people? What about the guy who dies his hair orange – much like the shooter in Aurora (who we see on TV) be the one who snaps? Or the army veteran, who has trouble getting his life back together, and spends time cleaning his guns? Eventually, it will become clear who the shooter is (Spoiler alert – it’s none of them, but another lonely soul). The film follows them all – as well as a fitness obsessed young woman with a YouTube channel (I think that’s what she’s filming for) – and some younger teenagers just being teenagers.  

 

Honestly, more than anything else, it was this approach that bothered me – this guessing game the Sutton is forcing the audience to play to figure out who’s going to live and die. It felt exploitive. Worse, because they are all living what amounts to similar, lonely, isolated, depressing lives, Sutton seems to be implying that all his characters – and perhaps everyone – all live in the same spectrum, all just waiting to snap and kill people. That feels like a rather glib observation – and, frankly, an offensive one. The ending of the movie doesn’t bother to show the violence – just the moment’s right before it’s going to happen – and it felt to me like Sutton wants to be congratulated for his restraint here. But it feels cheap.

 

Sutton’s talent is undeniable. The film is impeccably crafted, with great visuals and sound design. He has talent – and many who saw his last film, Memphis (which I have not) loved it. Yet, in Dark Night all that talent is at the service of a glib, superficial take on an important issue in American society, Van Sant’s film didn’t offer answers or easily platitudes – it made you uncomfortable, but forced you to watch – and 14 years later, it still haunts me. Dark Night angered me – and not in the way the film intends.