Red White & Blue
Red White & Blue
Directed by Simon Rumley, starring Amanda Fuller, Marc Senter, Noah Taylor.
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Erica (Amanda Fuller) has nothing to lose. She's a barfly, a bed-hopper, and a vagabond. Frankie (Marc Senter) is a wannabe-star rocker, one of many men who sleeps with her, and on the other end of this twisted triangle is Nate (Noah Taylor), a quietly-simmering violent man who's one of the few in town that hasn't been between Erica's legs. But he's a wedge in other ways — fatal ways.
Red White & Blue is one of those "notorious" movies (ala Dead Girl, Taxidermia, Martyrs) that's said to be as sickening as it is fascinating. Personally, I found it rather slow and hard to like, and by the time the real horror kicked in, I was already paralyzed by sensory overload — it was the third movie I'd seen in one day which culminated in characters duct-taped, bound to chairs, threatened at knife-point and sobbing through mouth-gags. I've never been an aficionado of such anyway (though some films, such as the original Funny Games, have their place in this canon) so Red White & Blue was a final coffin nail in my day and perhaps not judged as fairly as it could have been.
I will say that Red White & Blue is a superbly well-acted and excellently written film (an early exchange between Erica and Nate, in which Nate talks about his childhood pet, is gritty, authentic, and bone-chilling). There are layered characterizations, gritty, realistic run-down locations in Austin shown to their bleak best, and a solid, sordid story… but it's all so totally hopeless, sad, and ultimately depressing and harrowing, I can't really recommend it to any casual viewer. It's hardcore.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson