In Honor of Flag Day, Let's Do This:

So here’s the thing: I can’t really discuss today’s feature, 2010’s Red White & Blue without revealing a major plot point that emerges nearly one hour in. If you haven’t seen the film--and I do recommend it, providing you ‘enjoy’ similarly mean and complex horror along the lines of Jack Ketchum--then I would urge you to admire this photo of an adorable puppy carrying an American flag--

And now leave.


All others, here goes:


Quick Plot: Erica (a hauntingly straightforward Amanda Fuller) works menial manual labor jobs during the day while prowling cheap bars when the sun goes down. With white cowgirl boots riding high, the pretty enough redhead beds a man (or three) each night, never repeating herself or lingering for a morning spooning. She mysteriously draws the line (and closes her legs) at Nate, a war veteran and former interrogator now slumming away at a hardware store and boarding house.

Nate is played by British actor Noah Taylor, something you might not believe until IMDB tells you so. With a wiry black beard and loaded Texas drawl, the actor formerly known (to me) as Charlie Bucket’s dad or the Exposition Deliverer in Vanilla Sky disappears into the role of a self-aware sociopath with a mushy soft spot for the cold Erica.

A hesitant courtship follows, cutting off just at a point where it seems our mismatched would-be lovers might get serious. The film switches to the point-of-view of Frankie (The Lost’s Marc Senter), an almost maybe kinda successful rocker balancing a busboy job with his band’s upcoming tour and mother’s cancer treatment. The switch is odd, but not unreasonable; we should remember Frankie as one of the three men who picked up Erica in the opening scene.

In case you didn’t read my intro or decided to take a gamble (much like a few key characters in Red White & Blue), I’m about to get spoilery. Walk away kids. Walk. A. Way.

Frankie gets some bad news in the form of an HIV positive diagnosis, a double whammy since he’s been donating blood to his mother. He concludes--and we an the audience can *almost* be sure--that his one night of unprotected sex with Erica is to blame. Upon dragging her to his basement, it’s more or less confirmed. Erica was raped as a young girl and has essentially spent her life apathetically spreading her disease to any male irresponsible enough to blow his chances on a few hours of condomless sex with a stranger.

What to make of that? What Erica is doing is akin to murder, something made all the more powerful when we see the snowball effects that poisons Frankie’s innocent mother (wonderfully played by Sally Jackson). At the same time, Frankie made his own choice, playing Russian Roulette with his penis. It’s a risk people are taking every day.


Oh but the film doesn’t end there. Come now, this has been dubbed one of the more disturbing films of the year for very different reasons than moral quandaries. Frankie holds onto Erica for a night, creepily seducing her and making a doomed marriage proposal. It does not end well.


Once Nate discovers Erica’s fate, things get...bad. Families are slaughtered. New uses for deadly duct tape are discovered. Stab wounds juiced. It’s ugly. It’s senseless. It’s a nihilistic roller coaster that ends with pure hell.

Hugging your pound puppy yet? Feel like you learned anything about humanity, America, sexual responsibility or vengeance? I can’t say that I have. Part of me wants to roll my eyes at Red White & Blue’s pretentiousness, balk at its self-important title and passive aggressive attempt at linking everything from the Iraq War to revenge-fueled beheadings.

Red White & Blue IS pretentious, but it’s also quite fascinating as both a film and moral question asker. The three lead actors are excellent, giving vanity-free and layered performances that don’t let their characters off the hook. Though the score occasionally oversteps its place, it’s generally well-done with a sound entirely of its own. I don’t quite know how Red White & Blue was supposed to make me feel, but during its running time, I didn’t want to think about anything else and now that it’s over, it’s still there. While that's not necessarily the sign of an enjoyable film, it does make it worth watching for a certain type of viewer.


High Points
Credit must also go to the look of the film, in particular, its actual characters. Fuller is an attractive young actress, but the film is smart enough to let her look natural, patchy skin and all. It’s refreshing to believe our characters as real people, something too many films are too terrified to try

Low Points
As I said, the soundtrack does become a tad obtrusive at times


Lessons Learned
Never send a diner burger back to a Texas kitchen


When bound to a chair with your family’s life hanging in your voice, listen to the crazed war veteran asking you questions and for goodness sake, answer them 

Condoms people. Condoms.


Rent/Bury/Buy
Red White & Blue is currently streaming on Neflix and is certainly worth a thoughtful viewing, providing you enjoy complicated and brutal horror that tries to/might be socially important. I’m still not entirely sure where I fall, but I’m glad I watched the film and look forward to eventually revisiting it with a director commentary track. It does make me curious to seek out filmmaker Simon Rumley’s other work, including the also-Instant Watch The Living and the Dead. I like his ambition and directorial guts.


Now let's forget our problems with another helping of flag puppies: