Guns, girl, and the joy of life

I wonder why it had so limited theatrical release. It is fun to watch, it has guns, a lot of shooting, a lot of good jokes, etc. It has all ingredients of a blockbuster except of zillions of computer generated images. But more or less nobody had a chance to see it in a theater.

There are not only guns, but also knives and killings and a lot of blood. All this is to be taken at the same time lightly and seriously. The main characters, Frank and Roxy, kill only bad guys, but for them the bad guys are not the usual blockbuster villains, but fairly common people. If you cannot stand a lot of blood, stay away from this movie.

Tara Lynn Barr plays Roxy with charming spontaneity and joy. Joel Murray plays Frank a little bit heavy, but probably, the script is at fault, not he.

The movie is definitely not about a killing spree of a middle-aged man and a teenager, although it is fun enough as just such movie. On the first sight it is a modern remake of “Falling down”. But “Falling down” is about an insecure, threatened man; Frank is neither, and this is what makes the movie funny.

For me, the movie is about a person who lived long enough to be fed up with the society, and cannot take it anymore. It looks like a lot of people are fed up. The only unrealistic assumption of the movie is that they act out their discontent in a very bizarre way, but the movie is not realistic in the first place. There is an old French movie about the same kind of person in a similar position, “Demons of the South” (1979). The storyline is quite similar. It is hardly accessible now. I wonder if the writer-director is aware of this movie. Is “God bless America” simply a sort of remake of “Demons of the South”? Or two directors come to these troubling ideas independently?

There are flaws. All prolonged moralizing speeches by Frank, and all current at the time of filming politics should be cut out. Such things should be implied or just hinted at by a few words. The satirical version of the TV programming should be replaced by the real programming. Actually, all this still can be done, and some director's cut can be released. I am not giving it the 10 rating only because of these flaws.

Highly recommended, both as a pure entertainment and as an occasion to think if something is wrong about all of us (not just in America, “Demons of the South” is a witness).

8/10