Sovereign is an ambitious, above-average action thriller with the extra bonus of being a thought-provoking civics lesson. It’s full of information about how we live now in a country where crime thrives, criminals are as common as the people sitting next to you in church, and the underground is no longer what it used to be, but worse. A commendable first film by newcomer Christian Swegal, it’s too nasty, violent and relentlessly bloody for my taste, it still has plenty to say and does it with the impact of a fire alarm.
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SOVEREIGN ★★★ (3/4 stars) |
At the center of the unsettling true story are two sets of widowed fathers with sons to raise in a rural community in Arkansas. One is 45-year-old Jerry Kane, played by rising middle-aged star Nick Offerman, a dangerous, gun-toting redneck who feels so cheated and betrayed by life that he has become a chief spokesman for the growing “sovereign citizens” movement—an anti-government, anti-establishment system of right-wing radicals whose actions are motivated by a relentless distrust of authority—and his teenage son Joe, played with a troubling mixture of devotion and fear by Jacob Tremblay, the dynamic young Canadian actor who made a smashing debut as the kidnapped child in the devastating 2015 film Room. Both men are widowed, lonely and forced to raise their sons alone, but the similarities end there. Jerry taught his son to be an isolated loner, depend on nothing but his assault weapon, treat women with cruelty and indifference, and despise the law.
The other father, in the parallel story, is John Bouchart (Dennis Quaid, in a subtle performance that gives the film balance and logic as the town’s chief of police). Jerry’s total opposite, he’s a respectable citizen whose own son Adam (Thomas Mann) is a family man with a new baby and a responsible job as one of his Dad’s deputies. When Jerry loses his house in a foreclosure, and the bank tries to force Jerry and Joe out, they stand up for their alleged “Constitutional rights,” and the plot turns to compliance, control and the assertion that justice can survive only through the use of overwhelming force because in a corrupt society there’s no time to negotiate, no time to stop and consider the other person’s perspective.
“Listen to your Dad, he’s got a lot to teach you,” the sovereigns advise Joe, who is smart enough, even through his home schooling, to know his father’s crazy rhetoric is unhinged, but his tragedy is that he remains loyal to his father anyway. The movie is about how the boy learns that the twisted things he’s being taught are both illegal and wrong, but their beliefs lead to a tragedy that wrecks all of their lives, the conflicting elements collide, and even the police chief’s compassion can’t save them. The camera passes the local church, where the day’s logo is “All you need is love—and a new gun.” That seems to be the central theme of the whole movie.
Despite the political overtones that contribute to the current status of a divided America, the film is more interested in telling a gripping story and showing compassion for the elements that make up a polarized society than it is in condoning the life styles of either the police or the sovereigns who live in the margins of a flawed social system. The actors are uniformly real as characters negotiating a changing landscape (Martha Plimpton, in a small but important role as Jerry’s blowsy girlfriend, is especially riveting), and writer-director Swegal creates the backdrop of a poverty-stricken, emotionally barren and constantly struggling America consisting of strip malls, cheap roadside motels, greasy diners and escapist whitewashed churches that evoke total authenticity. I salute them all, but Mr. Swegal is the main artist responsible for Sovereign, worth keeping an eye on.