Trygve Allister Diesen has an unpronouncable name and a clearly awesome amount of ability. Co-directing Red with Lucky McKee, Diesen proves to the perceptive part of the world that he kicks a ton of ass behind a camera. For McKee, this marks the third consecutive film I've loved and probably the one I've felt the most from.
Red's a movie about an older southern gent whose dog is murdered by a group of young monsters. The titular best friend was all Avery Ludlow had left of his once prosperous family, and in watching the film you'll discover what happened to the rest of it. Lemme tell you - it's not a happy time at the movies. In fact, the scene felt like it was punching me in my damned heart... and it gives the old mantra of "Show, don't tell," a swift Van-Damme style kick to the face.
You know, "Depressed" isn't really the word to describe how I felt in the theater. Infuriated is more honest. The audience has no choice but to sit and watch kids in their late teens and adults in high positions stomp over any semblance of human faith they have. In a small southern town, you wouldn't expect so many people to show so little humanity. Red makes you think that maybe they are showing humanity, and God is that a horrible thought.
The film made me wanna lash out into the screen and rip a teenager's head off. It made me ache at my inability to do anything. I was a but voyeur and could provide no outside influence. I couldn't stand up, interrupting someone's empowered evilspeak and ask "Why has no one thought to kill you yet, sir?" That kind of thing is what sets this film apart from the pack... it makes you wish you could choose your own adventure - that you could have any shred of an effect on what was going on. Any film that can do that is a film that's succeeded in my eyes.
A lot of folks are making the performances out to be the best part of this film. Yeah, maybe, but that's stealing an important chunk of attention away from the direction, which is really, really good. Oftentimes in joint productions you can tell which director shot which scenes, but the whole thing is really quite seamless, and genuinely beautiful in its visual execution. And oh yeah, the performances are just as good as they're being made out to be, if not better.
You know, without telling whether or not the ending is as nihilistic as the rest of the piece, I can say that the ending could have been... anything. By the 90 minute mark, the movie had me in its grasp so tight that literally anything could have happened in the last 10 and I would have accepted it. God Himself coming down from Heaven and taking out the trash on His own would've been fine. If Brian Cox's Avery Ludlow had driven his truck off the side of a cliff, landing on Tom Sizemore's Michael McCormack and continuing on into the sunset, blood trailing in his wake... I would have swallowed it up. Thankfully, nothing like that happens, and the finale is actually quite reserved in comparison to the "B-Movie Bloodbath" some are making it out to be. The film doesn't die with its ending; it lives on.
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