On the couch

Red State
****
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Michael Parks, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Michael Angarano, Kerry Bishé

Hesher
***
Directed by:  Spencer Susser
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rainn Wilson, Natalie Portman, Devin Brochu

There is very little about Red State to suggest it’s a Kevin Smith movie.

It doesn’t look like one. Barring a few throwaway lines it doesn’t sound like one and if you’re expecting stoner humour, antics and the continued adventures of Jay and Silent Bob, you’re going to be in for a major disappointment.
Of course the upset will be short lived as Smith’s first non-comedy flick and only his second set outside his Askewniverse (the world he started building in his first film, Clerks and continued to milk to varying degrees of success across Mall Rats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clarks 2 and Zach and Miri Make a Porno) is a fine example of down and dirty filmmaking and what can be accomplished when an experienced director goes to work on a shoestring budget.
Billed as a horror movie but really more of an unnerving action flick, Red State is centred around a family of religious fanatics who peddle a disturbing brand of ultra-conservatism (they picket funerals), gun ownership and impending armageddon.
Led by Abin Cooper (played with terrifying, mesmeric brilliance by vetern actor Michael Parks) the Five Points Trinity Church kidnap a couple of local teens (to them: fine examples of everything licentious and wicked in the modern world, to us, just young fellas) with the intent of killing them during their church service.
The religious nuts’ perfect plan goes askew, however, and a hostage situation develops with John Goodman’s Agent Joseph Keenan caught between the bureaucratic demands of his superiors on the phone and harsh reality.
With Smith claiming this will be his second last film it’s easy to see how he decided to throw the kitchen sink at it creativly and damn the consequences. He should have done it years ago because the gripping, remorseless nature of the script and story is a far cry from some of his lighter, more meandering work.
With the Five Pointers bearing more than a passing resemblance to the real-life Phelps family and the Westboro Baptist Church, what horror the film provides lurks in the potential for this sort of thing to really happen.
Tense and tightly edited, Red State features a number of stand-out performances, from Parks and Goodman in particular, but also from Oscar nominee Melissa Leo and former Scrubs alum Kerry Bishé.
This is easily Smith’s best, most confidant film ever and if it is his penultimate effort, it’s likely to be the one he is most remembered for.
Hesher is what my grandfather would’ve called, “a quare auld yoke”. Spencer Susser’s film about an anti-social, heavy metal-loving drifter who crashes the lives of a grieving family has a lot more in common with a mournful melodrama than a dark comedy and, without Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s spectacular performance as the grumpy goth Hesher, that’s exactly what it would be.
In fact, without Gordon-Levitt, the film’s whole premise would be impossible to tolerate given it takes a running leap off the edge of plausibility around the time Hesher just decides lands himself in the middle of the Forney family under the pretence that he’s “a friend” of young TJ (Devin Brochu).
Like a sweary, violent Goldilocks, he starts sleeping in the beds, eating the food and generally making himself at home with nary a word of complaint from pill-popping father, Paul (Rainn Wilson) who seems too caught up in his own grief to notice that his son is desperately in need of help.
Through force of will, farting and generally being loud, obnoxious but generally correct in his assessment of family politics, Hesher helps TJ slough off his stupor of sadness and engage in some minor criminality while also making time to help the young fella befriend a local checkout girl Nicole (Natalie Portman).
Funny, shocking and sometimes sad, Hesher is one of those odd American slice-of-life dramas that bears little relation to the real world. It’s good though, in its way. Well acted, made and written, it’s worth it just to see Gordon-Levitt go mental so well and for so long.