by Brent Moore Wednesday 30th March 2011

Review: Kevin Smith’s Red State

Kevin Smith. Just the name alone elicits a pretty strong reaction from just about every film fan. Smith himself says the easiest way to start an argument with movie geeks is to just bring him up in conversation. This fact often means that the conversation about the man himself often overshadows the films he makes. They have increasingly seemed like afterthoughts. Especially since he has embraced the internet with Twitter and Smodcast and is constantly on tour with his speaking engagements. Kevin Smith is an institution. You are no longer buying a ticket for a Kevin Smith film, you are buying a ticket for a person.
 
This isn’t all that surprising since Smith gained notoriety for seeming like one of us. He spoke our language and was incredibly open whereas other entertainers stay at arms length. We liked him, even when he made it hard by putting out stuff like Cop Out, or whining about being kicked off an airplane way past the point where sympathy was an option.
 
So, what do you do when you’ve risen past the thing that made you famous? When you become your own product? Well, according to Kevin Smith, you quit. Smith has made the announcement that Red State and his upcoming Hit Somebody will be his last two films, and he wants to go out with a bang. He wants to bow out as a director that no one has to make apologies for, and you know what? He succeeds.

Red State would have been an incredibly strong statement coming from anyone, but from Smith, who has been perfectly content making “Kevin Smith” films up to this point, it’s an absolute revelation. This isn’t a slacker comedy for the pop culture obsessed. Isn’t some visually lacking excuse for crude monologues about Star Wars and pussy. Red State completely subverts everything you expect from Smith. It’s dark, confident, ballsy, uncomfortable, violent, thrilling, and never becomes a simple minded message movie.

For those not already aware, the film revolves around an extremist Christian cult (loosely based on the Westboro Baptist Church) who come into conflict with the law after a kidnapping of some morally vacant high school kids goes awry. Smith has been referring to this film as a horror movie for years now, but that’s a bit misleading. It’s scary, but it’s scary in the way watching ‘Jesus Camp’ is scary. Scary in the way watching the raid of the Branch Davidian Compound was scary. It’s more action drama than slasher. More morality play than torture porn.

That’s not to say there are no laughs here. In fact, the movie is quite funny. Most the time, this humor is a welcome bit of tension relief. Oftentimes it works by allowing a character in the film to say the thing the audience desperately wants to. However, if I had to lobby a complaint, I would say there are times where the humor just comes off as odd. There are certainly moments of tonal imbalance. Moments where tension relief is the exact opposite of what we need. Those moments are rare, though.

Michael Parks plays the leader of the cult and absolutely owns the screen every time he is on. He has a long monologue/sermon (probably ten to fifteen minutes) early on in the film that seems like it would try an audience’s patience, but he is so captivating and the speech sets the tone so well that you are never looking at your watch. Recent Oscar winner Melissa Leo also shows up as a cult member and continues doing crazy high strung old lady as well as anyone. John Goodman, despite his age and heft, manages to pull off a tough as nails ATF field operative faced with an impossible moral dilemma. The acting all around is incredibly strong. So much so that, if not for the unconventional distribution and resulting burned bridges, I could see this being recognized around award season.

Speaking of distribution, it’s cool to see a director blaze his own path and completely go against the established way of things (Smith claimed at the screening that Red State will be profitable before it ever hits a conventional cinema) but it’s unfortunate that once again the story is about Smith and not about the movie. This is a movie that deserves to stand on it’s own and speak for itself but it’s destined to be viewed as business experiment.

In the post-film Q&A, Smith blatantly said that this was his art film. He didn’t get into movies to just make comedies, but that’s what happened. That’s the outlet that worked for the stories he wanted to tell, but now that he’s bowing out of the filmmaking game he wanted to make the kind of movies that inspired him in the first place.  To prove to himself, as much as his audience, that he could. It’s almost sad that he succeeded since this is the kind of thing that hints at greatness to come.

We’ll get one more chance to see what else Smith has up his sleeve when he makes Hit Somebody, the hockey film that will be his last. Smith dropped a few hints about that movie at the screening, saying that it will be better than anything he’s ever done. The movie is a period piece covering one man’s hockey career from 1950 to 1980 and, if Smith has his way, will feature pretty much everyone he has ever worked with (including Tracy Morgan as, wait for it, Muhammad Ali).

Smith also made it clear that he is not done telling stories, he was born to tell stories, he’s just done doing so in film. He says he was never meant to be a filmmaker, that part just kind of happened. He plans to put most of his energy into the Smodcast network, since it allows him to tell stories in an unfiltered way and without the financial hassle. The big news was that he plans to continue the universe he created in this new medium, even saying he plans to get Ben Affleck and Joey Lauren Adams to come and do a one hour Chasing Amy reunion as a radio play.

He also detailed his plans for going into film distribution, an idea that was planted in his head at the 1997 SXSW film festival by Quentin Tarantino. He wants to give young filmmakers the same chance that he once had. Smith’s distribution company will specialize in films that everyone else has passed on. Filmmakers will have to present evidence that they have been turned out by all other distributers for Smith to consider them.

So, just as Smith reinvented himself as a filmmaker with Red State, he is heading into uncharted territory as a business man and content creator. It will be interesting to see how all of this turns out. I’m excited, which is something I haven’t felt about Kevin Smith for a long time.

Red State has several more showings as part of the current tour and will have a limited theatrical release later this year. There will likely be some kind of video on demand deal as well. However you are able to see it, just see it.