Bullet Points: American Violence
“Toyman” Chris DePetrillo convinced me to stop at each and every Dollar Tree within 20 miles of my house in search of bargain DVDs and Blu-rays and now I’m in possession of a number of movies that may never get watched. This one, however, lent itself perfectly to the Super Bowl season and I’m bound by my endless drive to watch as many Michael Pare movies as possible to watch it. Let’s see what happens…
Synopsis: Fascinated by the root causes of violent behavior, world renowned psychologist Dr. Amanda Tyler (Denise Richards) has an opportunity to interview and analyze death row inmate Jackson Shea (Kaiwi Lyman). As the interview commences, and Jack’s fate hangs in the balance, Amanda must determine whether or not a stay of execution should be granted.
- A hot start: The film starts off with Bruce Dern being a dick to his wife and then getting stabbed like 20 times in the chest. Not the best thing for his character and you have to assume we’ll learn more about who he is and why he deserves to be murdered so ruthlessly.
- Professor Denise: Denise Richards plays Dr. Amanda Tyler, a psychologist who specializes in killers who is the widow of a dead cop husband. It makes her less sympathetic to these folks on death row and the perfect candidate to interview Jackson Shea who is going to be executed for killing Bruce Dern. We learn that Dern was a warden at a prison that Shea was once at and we’re off with the story. Instead of being told in linear fashion, though, we’re transported back to when Jackson was a kid.
- Uncle Mike: Little Jack’s Uncle Mike was pervert who was diddling kids and gets what he deserved. It’s all part of what makes Jackson the stone cold killer he becomes as an adult. The one part about his childhood that I didn’t understand was that after he beats Uncle Mike to death with a baseball bat, he’s given the choice between juvi or the military. Was recruitment numbers that bad that they were offering choices like that to teenage murderers?
- Bring on the Pare: Adult Jackson finally hooks up with Michael Pare and they start doing heists. It eventually gets them a little too much attention and things progress to the point where dudes are getting tortured and killed. The film doesn’t seem to know which kind of story it wants to tell, at times. It wants me to sympathize with this character who had an awful upbringing but then all he does is make bad decisions. They also jump around from heists, to killing cartel members, to Silence of the Lambs interviews with Denise Richards. A very busy movie.
- I love you Emma: Jackson eventually meets up with Patrick Kilpatrick and his insanely hot daughter played by Emma Rigby. They somehow instantly fall in love and Jackson becomes a changed man. Not so changed that he isn’t still into committing crimes or anything, but changed enough to want to avenge the hell out her when things go bad.
- Supporting cast: The most noticeable thing from the cover of the film was the amount of actors they brought in to support Kaiwi and Emma. I’ve already mentioned Bruce Dern, Patrick Kilpatrick, Denise Richards, and Michael Pare but you can add Johnny Messner, Nick Chinlund, Stipe Miocic, and NFL great Rob Gronkowski to that list. It’s actually a bit distracting. There are too many recognizable faces that appear for only a few minutes and I think it took me out of the story more than it helped.
- Lessons: There are a lot of things happening in this film that none of the characters ever get a chance to breathe and react to them. Hell, with all the tortures, rapings, and killings, you would expect the main characters to be all sorts of messed up. The sad part is that because we’re never given the chance to see them take it all in, I’m not really sure whether or not they’ve truly learned anything from this whole ordeal. Yeah, Denise Richards will have to change her syllabus next semester, but I can’t say with certainly how much she will care about this character in a month.
The Verdict: American Violence isn’t a bad movie. There are plenty of things that I liked about it, in fact. The leads were perfectly acceptable in their roles. Nothing award winning but it also wasn’t expected. My problems with the film have to do with the score, the focus of the story, and the use of “named actors” to keep the plot going forward. I would rather see Kaiwi Lyman and Emma Rigby’s story than the revolving door of actors that popped in for a scene or two. A couple of them would have been fine but this was like a season of Celebrity Apprentice. All in all, it was well worth the $1 I bought it for at Dollar Tree and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t a massive pile of shit. He’s not dominating on the field for half a season and then getting hurt but that doesn’t mean that Rob Gronkowski can’t still be on your big screen. Check it out!
