Red State (2011)

Whatever happened to Kevin Smith? Since he made Clerks II in 2006, his career has been on a bit of a slide. I liked Zack and Miri Make a Porno but Cop Out was quite poor. It must be pretty annoying for him to see Judd Apatow doing so well, having essentially supplanted him in the same time period. I was aware at the time that there had been a controversy over the release of Red State but I didn't pay too much attention to it. I thought the trailer looked good and I decided to watch it at some point. Well, here we are.

The Five Points Trinity Church, run by Pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), is a church so virulently homophobic and extreme that they make the Westboro Baptist Church look moderate by comparison. When sex-starved high school kids Jared (Kyle Gallner), Travis (Michael Angarano) and Billy Ray (Nicholas Braun) arrange a hook-up with a local woman, they think they're going to lose their virginity to her. Unfortunately for them, she turns out to be Abin Cooper's daughter Sarah (Melissa Leo) and the trio are drugged, abducted and taken back to the church, which is inside something resembling a military compound. After witnessing Abin Cooper preach his message of hatred and intolerance to his extended family, the kids watch on as the family executes a gay man. Knowing that they are next, they try to make a break for it. Meanwhile, acting on a tip-off from local sheriff Wynan (Stephen Root), Special Agent Keenan (John Goodman) of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrives outside the church to arrest the Cooper family on suspicion of possessing illegal firearms. He's half-right. The family don't have some illegal firearms, they have an entire armoury of them. The situation quickly deteriorates and erupts into a massive fire-fight.

For a film that's supposedly a satire of homophobic, far-right Christians, it's pretty low on the satire and for a film with a huge gun battle between the government and said tooled-up Christian nutjobs, the action is surprisingly disappointing. Also, I note that it's listed as an action-horror film. There's nothing about this film that makes it a horror. It's more of an action-thriller if anything. Furthermore, in the last twenty-five minutes just falls apart. It descends into stupidity and then there's a change of pace so abrupt and jarring that it made me crick my neck. Kevin Smith's skill as a writer is well-known but he's a pretty poor director and it really shows here. The talented cast do quite well and Michael Parks is the pick of the bunch as the hate-filled preacher but he can't quite lift this film out of middling mediocrity.

Red State is an interesting idea that certainly has legs. Unfortunately, Kevin Smith wastes it. It's not acerbic enough, shocking enough or sufficiently well-made.

5 out of 10.