The story of an incredibly stupid group of punk rock kids travelling across America trying to make ends meet and stealing resources from everybody else because they're too darn lazy and adequate to either: move on with their lives or become good at their craft.
To make things even worse the kids are trying to wrap up their failures in some pseudo philosophy bull crap about being on the edge or the purest of experience. Some such nonsense. It's a lot of Sand mandala type of thinking.
But here's the thing.
The monks who make those little sand pictures, who spend hours (if not days) creating this beautiful work of art. They only let people see it for about 5 minutes before flipping it over and having a whole thing destroyed.
Thus never seeing it again.
The idea is to experience the beauty. To appreciate it for what it is, right then and there. Then watching it dissipate; knowing that that experience can never be repeated.
It doesn't really work if you are a horrible rock band who can barely sing a decent node and who also has the wise idea of performing an anti Neo-Nazi song at a skinhead bar.
I guess all the kids got to learn a valuable lesson as they were systematically butchered by a group of incredibly scary white supremacist. And there's even a few who managed to survive the entire ordeal. Do they grow as people? Probably not.
So putting aside my silly ramblings of how I think about the main cast and why they're characterisation leaves a little bit to be desired. What do I actually think of the film overall?
It's pretty darn good. It's going to solid enough atmosphere (although it does feel a little disjointed at times, having these random punk rock kids locked in this one room, completely surrounded by this horrible neo-nazis.)
There's a nice simple amount of tension throughout most of the movie. You're really not sure who's going to survive or die. And I like the idea of having so much story and Claude take place in such a small environment. Most of the film never leaves the Green Room Bar.
I kind of had more investment in Patrick Stewart and his cronies that I did the gang of kids. Like there's clearly an entire story going on behind-the-scenes with how this Neo-Nazi organisation. I kind of want to see that movie.
It would just be Patrick Stewart leading this gang of delinquents and plotting whatever it is he's planning to do. Rather that be selling drugs or trying to alter the local politics of his community so he can get a stronger foothold in whatever power system happens to be there.
In a way that kind of sums up a problem. I have more investment in the freaking neo-nazis then I do the rock and roll kids. And I didn't have a ton of investment in their survival throughout the film. At first I was thinking this was a negative but then I just changed the way I thought about this movie. Instead of looking at it as a dramatic horror drama I looked at it instead as a slasher film. And all of a sudden the movie clicks a lot better.
Obviously it was great watching half of these deplorable neo-nazis getting butchered at the end of the film.
When there's only two characters left and the entire film evolved into a escapade with over the top crazy characters, shooting shotguns and flinging machetes at each other.
It almost turned into an exploitation film. Which admittedly would hurt this film if you're looking at it for more of a dramatic point of view.
But like I said earlier; 'Try to view it as a slasher film and you'll get a lot more out of it.'' Otherwise enjoy the gore, enjoy the good camera effects and appreciate some of the simplistic language in body movements of all the different characters as they interact with each other.
There's a surprising amount of humanity to all the different characters. Which really makes you have to think about what kind of a place humans can go too, when you can express so much of the human condition in groups of punk rockers and people who want to associate themselves with a German fascist party of the 40s.
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