AMERICAN VIOLENCE – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

American Violence is trash, but it’s trash with a good bibliography. This is a movie that takes the movies: Goodfellas, Drive, American History X, Silence of the Lambs, Hell or High Water, Mel Gibson revenge films, and even most recently The Birth of a Nation and tries to squash them all into the same movie.

American Violence has nowhere near the execution of those films though and this almost allows it to play like a dark comedy about all the violence that is championed in American films. Its inspiration is, in fact, some of the bloodiest movies of all time. The fact that Denise Richards is around also clues us into the fact that this could all be satire with the straightest face. Richard’s pioneered this type of schlocky, violent film in the 90’s with great hilarious thrillers like Starship Troopers and Wild Things, and American Violence seems to be playing that angle. Not horrible, not good, just somewhere in the middle where you’re wondering whether or not you should be taking the copying of famous violent scenes, and dramatic grimacing seriously or just be having as good of a time as possible as Denise Richards stares with wide blue eyes at the inmate she’s doing a psych evaluation for.

A little bit of both might be the answer. For all of this to be funny, you have to take it seriously, and let the overblown grim sensibility slowly becomes hilarious. The over the top disparity of its events can’t help but be comedic at their best, and it all is to present to not be the intention.

This composure seems to break when the film inevitably gets too dark (ie. child abuse and prison rape) and American Violence gets really obnoxious when it gets gritty. Bruce Dern (who was so perfect in Nebraska) shows up as the warden, a hugely despicable character who just depresses on the screen while reading off stock lines. Dern’s fine, his character just seems to take all the satirical air out of the movie as he creates a horrible sense of all the fun being drained from the film. This American Violence feeling long at 106 minutes and that’s not an ideal situation.

It is helpful that most of the actors seem to be in on the joke as they mug to the camera in an overly dramatic way. Again, the line of satire isn’t really distinguished, so all this acting isn’t ever consistently dramatic or funny, but credit is due to those who try. If anything, this enthusiasm adds to the satiric aesthetic, making the acting really even something of a treat.

American Violence is just the type of film one might expect to come out in the wake of Goodfellas and Basic Instinct. One of those enthusiastic, but just a little too ironic clones that is trying to be as epic and disturbing as the hyper-violent films that inspired it and instead comes off satiric (yes, I understand that Basic Instinct is also satiric). As satire, American Violence succeeds. If only it would stop breaking that illusion and taking itself so seriously.

2 1/2  of 5 Stars

AMERICAN VIOLENCE Debuts in Theaters, Video on Demand and Digital HD on February 3 Blu-Ray and DVD Release on March 14