Nazi Punks Fuck Off – GREEN ROOM

I’m a pretty chill guy.  I try to be open minded and listen to all points of view.  I try not to make generalizations.  But man, do I hate Nazis.  It’s not a bold statement. Just about everybody hates Nazis, or the concept of Nazis, at least.  It is an unequivocal subject.  Their beliefs and tactics are too vile for a rational person to be on the fence about.  They are the human equivalent of genital warts, you cannot be okay with that shit.  In fact, the only people who don’t hate Nazis are Nazis.  And the current President of the United States, apparently.  But do you know who really hates Nazis?  Jeremy Saulnier’s brutal skinhead siege film, GREEN ROOM.

The Capsule:

The Ain’t Rights, composed of Pat (Anton Yelchin, in one of his last roles),  Sam (Alia Shawkat), Tiger (Callum Turner), and Reece (Joe Cole), are an uncompromising indie punk band dedicated only to their music and the live experience.  They are so uncompromising, in fact, that nobody has heard of them and they have to siphon gas from parking lots of small town skating rinks just to keep their van going.  Desperate for cash, they accept a gig sight unseen at what turns out to be a skinhead club deep in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest.  After a tense but uneventful set, the band is almost out the door when Pat accidentally stumbles across a murder scene.  Then everything goes to shit.  Pat and the others barricade themselves in the venue’s green room, along with the murder victim’s low key psycho friend, Amber (Imogen Poots in a startling and unflattering haircut).  On the other side of the door, scary Nazi headmaster, Darcy (Patrick Steward), tries to negotiate a peaceful resolution while methodically planning their execution.  When the kids don’t go for it, Darcy brings in his jackbooted machete thugs and attack dogs for extra persuasion.  Every desperate escape attempt ends with the band back in the green room, minus a few members.  Outnumbered and outgunned, their only hope of getting out is to break the rules of the game.

Jeremy Saulnier knows how to make people uncomfortable.  Just like his previous film, BLUE RUIN, he excels in putting sympathetic underdogs in situations way, way out of their depth.  Here he takes an interesting tactic of making his protagonists a punk band.  Like their music, they seem spiky, loud, and aggressive, but we quickly learn that it is all just a front.  Asked in an interview to name their “desert island” band, they all come up with appropriately heavy answers like Black Sabbath and The Misfits (except Pat, who can never decide on anything), only to later confess their real picks are along the lines of Simon & Garfunkel and Prince.  Beneath their tough talk and true punk aesthetic they they are just a bunch of kids.  So when they roll into the skinhead compound, totally unprepared for what they’ve gotten themselves into, it feels like a line of ducklings waddling into a kennel of German Shepherds.  

Even though they are petrified, the kids are ballsy enough to state their opinion with their opening song, a cover of Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”.   We’ll take your money, and maybe we’ll entertain you, but we do not like you.  For a while, it seems to be going pretty well.  Aside from the spitting, cussing, and sneering, the crowd doesn’t give them any real trouble.  The relative civility comes to an end really quickly once Pat stumbles on the murder scene.  The skinheads close on the kids like a bear trap.  One second they are walking down the hall with cash in their hands, the next they are locked in a room with a hairless Sasquatch (Eric Edelstein) pointing a gun in their faces.  It’s a bad turn.

Things get so much worse when Darcy arrives.  Goddamn, who knew Capt. Picard could be such a scary motherfucker?  All the tattooed, hyper violent hate-freaks lurking around the club can’t hold a candle to the menace that radiates off Darcy.  He is the ultimate evil dad, turning his gullible, disaffected flock into monsters.  They look at him with reverence, and lap up any scraps of approval he throws their way.  He is the voice of authority around those parts, calm, stern, and horribly, deceptively reasonable.  The Ain’t Rights want to believe him when he says he just wants them out of his place of business (which he does, just not alive).  He doesn’t make threats, he makes compromises that seem in their best interest.  He is so good at persuasion that he convinces the band that handing over their only weapon is a logical act, and poor Pat almost loses a hand for it.  

That is another thing that Saulnier is great at, sucker punching us with extreme, visceral violence.  As you may know, I like my horror gory, and the more excessive the better.  GREEN ROOM’s violence is excessive, but it is not fun.  Nor is it designed to punish you with extended suffering, torture porn style.  The bloody business happening here is sudden, brutal, and very realistic.  The violence also feels very unfair, since the worst of it is inflicted on the least deserving people.  As impressive as the make-up effects are, it is something I didn’t want to see.  I especially didn’t want to see anything happen to feisty Alia Shawkat.  She was Maeby from Arrested Development!  They can’t hurt Maeby!  Well, maybe they can.

On a slightly less realistic note, duct tape is apparently the miracle medical treatment.  Pat’s hand is practically hanging from the wrist after he pulls it back through a door, but give it a good wrap in duct tape and his arm is as good as new!  Works on bite wounds as well.  Makes you wonder why people don’t keep a roll on them at all times in these movies. 

The attitude towards violence is the marked difference between the Nazi and non-Nazi punks.  Violence comes as easy as breathing to the militant skinheads.  For them, getting to stab someone is like being thrown a dog treat, a reward for loyal service.  They are always looking for the opportunity to spill blood for their cause, or for any reason.  Darcy's club is one big, fucked up candy store to them.  

The Ain’t Rights are on the other end of the spectrum.  They are rightly horrified by not only the violence used against them, but by what they are forced to dish out as well.  Reece initially seems excited to put his jiu jitsu routines to practical use on Big Justin, but he doesn't know what to do when it goes past the point of a competition tap out.  We get that classic “tooling up” thrill when Sam breaks open the tip of a florescent tube to make a spear, only to immediately waste it with a panicked throw into an empty hall.  Even Pat, our main hero, is utterly useless in a fight.  His best weapon isn’t a machete, it’s stage presence (“Odin himself”).

The only reason anyone gets out alive is Amber.  She's the hybrid.  Although she is insulted to be called a Nazi (and doesn't care any better for the nickname Ilsa), she is undeniably part of that world.  She’s lost faith with it, though, even before seeing her friend murdered in front of her eyes.  Switching sides doesn't entirely take the stink off.  Her motivation is a mix of jaded vengeance and self-destruction.  Like her former buddies, violence is her natural form of expression.  She is more than willing to cross the line when needed.  In fact, I don’t think she even knows there is a line.  When the Ain’t Rights are freaking out about how to tell if one of the thugs is dead or just faking, Amber skips taking a pulse and slits open his stomach with a box cutter, as casually as unzipping a jacket.  A jacket made of meat.  She would make a terrible paramedic, in my opinion.        

Of course, the most frightening thing about the movie is that these kinds of diseased assholes actually exist.  There are no Hannibal Lectors or Jigsaws in the world, but there are Darcys.  And thanks to the narcissistic bully running America who cherry picks which evil he denounces, they’ve been emboldened to crawl out of the shadows and compounds and rocks they’ve been festering under and openly praise this country’s racist roots.  

Believe me, I’d much rather have a few erudite cannibals running around than a bunch of Nazis.  Cannibals are easier to stomach.  I get the concept of why there is racism.  It’s all about fear.  Fear that the Other will take your stuff.  It’s primitive and stupid, but I understand it.  I understand being insecure (happens every time I hit the publish button).  I see how the Darcys of the world can use religion as a recruitment tool, twisting it until it runs completely counter to its intent.  What I don’t get is how anyone, anywhere, could chose to be a Nazi.  Especially in America.  Sure, maybe some of these kids are too young to have any real connection to the horrors the first Nazis inflicted, and they might buy into horseshit conspiracy theory like denying the Holocaust, but as Americans, they had to have fucking seen RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.  Who can watch that movie and think, “forget Indiana Jones, I want to be like the dude whose face is melted off”?  Do you know why his face is melted off?  Because he was a Nazi, and EVERYONE HATES NAZIS!  

GREEN ROOM, while most definitely anti-Nazi, doesn't paint them in broad strokes. There is some room for redemption.  Amber was part of a dissenting faction of Darcy’s group that wanted out.  Gabe (Macon Blair), the sensitive Nazi, starts off as a true believer, but comes to realize he is not cut out for that life.  Saulnier doesn't glorify them just for going against their rotten kind, though.  Gabe is a weak man who let a lot of people die.  Amber is mostly out for herself.  For whatever reason, they chose to be involved in that life.  They are not very fine people.  They did make the effort, at least.

The saddest sight in the movie is also its most apt metaphor.  A dying attack dog slowly trods down the road in search of his master.  He walks right by Pat and Amber without even a glance and lies down beside the body of the Trainer.  He’s a vicious killer, but without anyone left to give him commands, he just wants the comfort of the only person who cared for him.  Good dog, bad training.

Oh man, sorry to be such a downer with this one.  I’m usually not so political, angry, or cussy, but it’s been a rough week.  With the state of things, I felt it was important to say something, even in my own dumb way.  Come back next time and I promise I’ll have more lighthearted weirdness for you.

Unless you are a Nazi punk, in which case FUCK OFF!

C Chaka

Rising Up – EVERLY

Four years is a long time to be trapped with people who don't respect you.  People who want to silence your voice.  People who want to use you, and don’t care about your health and well-being.  People who endanger your family.  Salma Hayek’s titular character from 2014’s high action siege movie EVERLY knows about these people, and she’s determined that four years are all they are going to get from her.

The Capsule:

We come into the worst day of Everly’s (Salma Hayek) thoroughly fucked up life, already in progress.  Her only shot of escaping four years of slavery under the Yakuza boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe)  has gone tits up in spectacular fashion.  Her only option seems to be to lay down and die.  Instead, she blows away a whole room full of gangster scumbags and plunges headlong into a new plan: kill everyone who stands between her and the door.  More important than her own freedom, she must make sure her mother (Laura Cepeda) and daughter Maisey (Aisha Ayamah) get the money she has squirreled away in order to buy them another life.  Blocked at every turn, Everly must deal with wave after wave of killer prostitutes, corrupt cops, guard dogs, and vicious torturers who are all determined to keep the boss’ plaything in her place.  Everly has had enough and she is willing to bring the entire building down if it means saving her daughter from the hell she has endured.

Selma Hayek is phenomenal as Everly.  She's a badass, but in the same way John McClane was in DIE HARD.  She doesn’t want to be in that situation, she just doesn’t have a choice.  She is terrified in the beginning, stumbling and not knowing exactly what to do.  The first time she picks up a submachine gun, she empties the clip into the ceiling without hitting anything.  The only think keeping her going is her unwavering determination.  

Like John McClane, she takes an ever increasing amount of punishment throughout the movie.  A bullet wound through the side (and later the shoulder), cuts, gashes, contusions, acid burns, she has to push through it all.  Luckily for her, she also follows McClane’s rule that gunshots only hurt when you can see them bleeding.   Slap some duct tape on and she’s doing fine.

Everly may start out shaky, but once she gets her confidence back, she is a serious piece of work.  Nothing is revealed about what Everly was like before the abduction.  There is no indication she had any special training, but she's good with a gun and not squeamish about having to kill a guy (or twenty), so she wasn’t an average soccer mom.  She knows how to leverage her advantages.  She takes out a squad of goons in full tactical gear by being faster, smarter, and even more ruthless.

It should be noted that Selma Hayek was 48 years old when she made this movie.  Time has been very, very good to her.  She is amazingly fit, able to roll with some grueling fight sequences and lug around a huge machine gun believably.  She had a stunt double for the extreme stuff like diving over counters and getting blown through doorways, but Hayek herself is slogging her way through the majority of the punishment.  And even under all the bruises and blood, she is still fiercely beautiful.  

Incidentally, the role of Everly was originally slated for Kate Hudson.  I cannot even imagine what the hell that movie would look like.  There aren’t that many Yakuza rom-coms out there.

Structurally, EVERLY is a very odd movie.  The bulk of its running time is spent in only one location, the (initially) luxurious apartment that has been Everly’s cell for the last four years.  There are eventually quick trips to the hall way and to an adjacent apartment, and we get to see other parts of the building through security footage, but otherwise this could be an extremely violent and explosive stage play.  

The subject matter is incredibly dark, and it does not shy away from indicating exactly what these Yakuza bastards think of women.   When Taiko threatens to bring in Everly’s little girl to fill her vacancy at the hotel, we know the sick son of a bitch isn’t bluffing. 

For as grim and gritty as the tone can be, the movie veers into some very crazy territory.  Everly’s first trial after defying Taiko is to fend off a group of bombastic Yakuza prostitutes all fighting for the brand new bounty placed on her head.  They all live and work together on the same level of the apartment building, so it has an additional awkward quality, like being attacked by the people in your office.  They seem to have more freedom (and a lot more weapons) than Everly, though.  A couple of them are straight up murderous, but several are sympathetic to her plight.  The money is just too good to pass up.  Except that they really should have.

Director Joe Lynch has his own style, but he owes a lot to Tarantino, especially with the injection of morbid humor into a tense situation.  One example is when Everly realizes Maisey is face to face with Bonsai, a vicious and much disliked guard dog.  Bonsai’s smirking handler keeps his hand on the dog’s collar as Everly slowly reaches down to pick up her child, letting him loose just as she grabs her.  Everly races back into the apartment and is a second away from being torn apart when she tosses a grenade into the hall.  The dog bolts out to fetch it, with the handler running after yelling, “Bonsai, that’s not a ball!”  Boom.

The action is quick, frantic, but well shot and easy to track.  It can also be satisfyingly over the top.  One scene has Everly tossing a grenade into an elevator full of gangsters just as the doors close.  There is the sound of an explosion and a huge jet of blood shoots from between the seam of the doors.  It’s like a miniature version of the blood elevator from THE SHINNING.  

There are long pauses in between the action sequences when Everly gets to catch her breath.  She even has the chance to clean up the apartment and take a shower before her mom and Maisey show up.  I found this initially unnatural and distracting, but there is an explanation near the end that makes sense.  More importantly, it gives the movie time to develop some true pathos between characters (the ones that last more than 30 seconds, at least).  

One of them is a victim of Everly’s first shooting spree.  Referred to callously as Dead Man by Everly, Akie Kotabe spends all of his screen time slowly bleeding to death on a couch.  Everly eases his suffering out of basic human compassion, but she doesn’t let him off the hook just because he is a soft spoken, gentle nerd in a suit.  Even though he didn’t participate in the abuse the other Yakuza inflicted on her (thankfully off screen), he did not stop them either.  In time though, she realizes he was in the same boat as her, forced by the Yakuza do to things that revolted him.  He is just another sad, isolated victim, though more by choice than Everly.  In the last moments of his life, he has finally made a real connection with a person, the woman who shot him.  His best moment is when he distracts Everly’s daughter from finding a stack of bodies by singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” with her.  It isn’t enough to wipe the slate of his life clean, but it is the best he can do.

Everly has some very touching moments with her daughter, who was one year old the last time she saw her.  They are both awkward and unsure of each other.  Aisha Ayamah is a real cutie and plays Maisey with such shy innocence, it’s almost an emotional cheat.  Those scenes would be touching to anyone with an empathic bone in their body.  The real gut wrenching scenes come with Everly’s mother.  Not realizing what she has had to endure, her mom gives Everly hell for abandoning her daughter.  Everly has a more than valid excuse, but just sits there in the bathroom and lets her mother unload, overcome by four years of unreasonable but ever present guilt.  Once Everly explains what happened, corroborated by a bathtub full of dead gangsters, the two mothers finally have a true reconciliation.  It’s a beautiful and powerful moment.  

Good feelings only last a second, because then we come to the most batshit part of the movie, Togo Igawa as The Sadist.  He arrives wheeling in a half-naked man in a slender cage of hooked bars, accompanied by four freaks dressed as Kabuki demons.  Keep in mind, this is the guy the Yakuza call when they need things to get really hardcore, so we know he is bad news.  You never want to meet a cordial, well-dressed man carrying a medical bag filled with delicate bottles of various acids and poisons.  The entire sequence gets more and more surreal and frightening, especially once he gets Everly in the cage.  The power quickly shifts back and forth several times before the Sadist gets his fitting (and extremely messy) end.

The final showdown with Taiko is an all-out battle of wills; supreme arrogance and cruelty against unbreakable ferocity.   It doesn’t matter that Taiko has the upper hand.  As he slides his razor sharp sword across her skin, waxing on about the divine brutality of Yakuza love, she’s coming up with different ways to tell him to go fuck himself.  She will never again be his slave.  No matter what he does to her, she’s already beaten him.  And she still has a few more tricks up her sleeve.  

Metaphorically.  She’s wearing a tank top.

Everly’s situation is considerably more extreme than anything we are likely to face during our four year cohabitation with a cartoonish villain.  I also admit that some of us have had to deal with blatant disrespect and hostility for far more than four years (an entire lifetime, for instance, or many lifetimes).  But focusing on these upcoming four years in particular, there is a lot to take away from EVERLY.  We won’t (or shouldn’t) be fighting with bullets or grenades or swords, but we can fight with our words and actions and solidarity.  We can make it very clear right from the beginning that four years is all they are going to get from us.  Hopefully we don’t have to do it in ten inch high heels, though.  They look painful.

C Chaka