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Highly Overrated But Still Good

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The 4 Tops had it right in 1966 when they sang this song - except this film was not made until 2007!! How did they know? Seriously people a 7.3 rating? Granted the acting was good and the soundtrack appropriate, but classifying this film as a thriller, as my 3 three year old grand daughter would say "is Ridkolous."The plot is slow, the actors talk slow, they move slow, the music is slow, the "action scenes" take literally seconds. (so I guess you could say they were not slow) I understand that things which occur off screen can take on greater depth and imagination, but for that to occur, something has to happen. And not much happens throughout the movie. And amazingly the director must have thought at times too much tension was building, so he even stepped it down a notch or two with even slower music between scenes. For instance, during one scene, a car drives up to the house!!! Now wait a minute, modern audiences can only take so much!! please let us catch our breath!Now some may see great existential meaning in the film - that this gives depth and meaning to the Southern farm experience, etc. etc. etc. Well the only thing I can say to them is Hans Christian Anderson called "BS" on that many years ago with "The Emperor's New Clothes." And then finally, there is the dialogue. Can it be true that people from Arkansas only speak in 2 or 3 word sentences? Well if this is your cup of tea, good for you. As for me and my household, we place this one among the notables of snoozdom: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", "Cache", and the all time snoozer: "Boyhood"

***Some Minor Spoilers*** Shotgun Stories takes a while to bust out the shotguns. I was feeling a little itchy waiting. I'll save you the trouble of wondering: it was worth it.This tragic indie-drama focuses on a blood-feud which spirals toward the clash of two sets of half-brothers. Son, played by the underrated Michael Shannon, and his younger brothers, Boy and Kid, were abandoned by their drunken father early in life. After the separation, their father went on to sober up, find Jesus, and raise a Mulligan-family of four brothers born of his second wife. His new family (the Hayes), operate a successful farm, which the reformed father built once he crawled out from the bottle and into Jesus's hands.Son, Boy, and Kid are impoverished - Boy lives in his van, Kid in a tent outside Son's trailer - so it's no surprise that they hate the Hayes and the life their father built for them. Then one night their vengeful mother shows up at Son's house to inform the three brothers that their father is dead.Hitherto we've only seen Son as a quiet, relatively pacifist protagonist. The turning point is when he interrupts the funeral with his brothers in tow, demanding to speak.With all the Hayes family in attendance, he basically calls their father a piece of crap. He caps it off by spitting on the old man's casket.That's when I busted out the popcorn.The second wife intercedes to prevent an outright brawl, and Son and his brothers depart without any violence, but there's not a doubt in my mind that this is only the beginning.  The Hayes brothers, befuddled by grief for the good man they knew as their father, are out for blood, and Son, Boy, and Kid are happily willing to unleash their lifetime of rancor for the man they knew as a violent drunk.Writer-director Jeff Nichol's impressive debut is unmistakably indie in tone and theme. There's a lot of 'negative space' here: a character stares off into the distance, and the audience must decipher a tick of the eyebrow or quirk of the lips. Son's character carries the majority of the weight there: a lesser actor might have sunk the project, but Michael Shannon packs marvelous punch with his limited dialogue, and he manages the 'simple man' affect without seeming dumb. Au contraire. His long pauses and nuanced expression deliver the exact opposite: we see an intelligent man who's slow to speak his mind (and is even something of a doormat when it comes to confrontation) but - once the tension and violence amp up - doesn't hesitate to defend himself and his family.Plot-wise, the violence is brutal and gut-wrenching, but it isn't the focus. The worst of it all occurs off-screen, and the gamble pays off. Shotgun Stories' global themes specifically deglorify violence.Most of us haven't incited a familial feud by spitting on our deadbeat dad's casket, but the themes of senseless division and reckless hate are more prescient than ever. Whether it's Shiites and Sunnis or Republicans and Democrats, we're all too aware of the cultures of division, partisanship, and sectarianism. The viewer will undoubtedly connect to Shotgun Stories and its overarching theme. While you won't find any Juliet to Son's Romeo- besides perhaps his wife, who's just left him at the film's opening scene- there are definite parallels between the age-old Capulet-Montague dynamic. Considering the self-defeatism the film portrays as inherent to such a conflict, one might argue it reaches back to Shakespeare's own source material, the Greek tragedy. The deeper Son and his brothers delve into the conflict brewing with the Hayes clan, the more we come to understand that nothing good can possibly come of it.Besides Shannon, the acting is good but not noteworthy, excepting perhaps Son's wife (Nicole Canerday), the criminal but likable Shampoo (G. Alan Wilkins, an apparent nobody who I'd love to see more from), and Cleaman Hayes (Michael Abbot Jr.). Cleaman's character stands out especially as the single reasonable Hayes brother, and Abbot's acting delivers a convincing portrait of a brother trying to keep the peace but unwilling to let his brothers fight a war on their own.Aside from Cleaman, however, the Hayes closely resemble human-shaped turds. I spent a decent portion of the film hoping Son would go grab that promised shotgun and finish them already, even knowing the film wasn't headed that direction. If I had any major complaint with Shotgun Stories, it's that it didn't fully convince me that the majority of the Hayes didn't deserve to be wiped from the face of the earth, which is clearly not what the film aimed for. Aside from Cleaman, two of the brothers are all but villainized, and the final brother has the screen-presence of a wet noodle. Though Son is the unquestioned protagonist, Nichols wanted me to sympathize with the Hayes brothers as the other side of the same coin, which I simply couldn't do. Regardless of the fact that Son did spit on their daddy's casket, I couldn't see the Hayes as anything but instigators and 'the bad guys' until the end, which was too late a reversal for me to buy in. I'll give Nichols a pass, though, since he met, and sometimes surpassed, the mark he aimed for everywhere else.Overall I'm glad a TRUSTED friend recommend this; otherwise, I might have bailed early on an amazing film. While the themes and acting are powerful, the opening is slow, and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It's a little more in-your-head than the average American viewer might want from even a drama. Regardless, I'd stand by it as a recommendation for anyone looking for a character-driven story heavy on themes of family loyalty and the hopelessness of hatred.

Southern American culture is rich in storytelling tradition and part of that is the story of the blood feud. But Shotgun Stories is not about those ancient yokels, the Hatfields and the McCoys, but contemporary families in rural Arkansas.One father, two wives. Two sets of sons. With first wife, father was an alcoholic ne'er to do well who abused his wife. The boys by this wife are poor. He cleaned up his act when he ran off with this second wife and became a farmer. The sons by this wife are middle class. The sets of sons hate each other. The father dies. At his funeral, his first set of sons shows up, brazenly unkempt to spite the well-dressed second set of sons. The oldest makes a speech condemning the father for abandoning them, then spits on the casket. A fist fight breaks out. Vengeance is sworn.And so the movie begins. And blood is shed.The information above about family history does not emerge all at once. Bits are doled out as we get to know the Hayes family, the sons, their wives and girlfriends, friends (some, like Shampoo, disreputable) and their children. An often unmoving camera fixes on the details on these young men's lives, especially the older ones, Son, Kid and Boy (Yes, that's their names).Just about everybody in the movie has known each other since childhood.This is not a fast-paced movie, but the tension builds to almost unbearable levels as retribution leads to worse retribution. Interestingly, the most serious violence occurs off camera. Eventually, a peacemaker emerges in a most unlikely (but maybe not) persona.Shotgun Stories is the kind of movie film festival goers adore. Low budget. Unknown actors. Local color. Rich dialogue. Evocative cinematography.If that's not your bag, stay away. But if it intrigues you, check this out.

Shotgun Stories is a film that should be better than it is. The material provides any number of story lines to emerge that would be more convincing than what is actually shot. The movie does have one thing going for it: Michael Shannon. Too long has this great actor sat in the background of American film. Seen most recently in the William Friedkin adaptation of Tracy Letts' "Bug," Mr. Shannon has the ability to hide his intentions better than any other actor around. The only reason to keep watching this movie at all is because you're not exactly sure what he's up to. While watching this film, one can't help but notice that it looks an awful lot like a David Gordon Greene movie. That's a nice touch, except when the end credits finally...finally go up it shows that this much better filmmaker is a co-producer. Had Mr. Greene taken the helm of this "family tragedy" it's possible the end result would be a far better affair. One fine scene exits in the movie, and it centers around a monologue delivered believably by Mr. Shannon. The scene is early on in the film and occurs at a funeral, and the tension between the families and the setting alone prepare you for more well written, well acted scenes that involve the same amount of truth as this one. Unfortunately, those scenes never come. Jeff Nichols structures the film into an old fashioned Greek tragedy that pits brother against brother. The grudge between them comes from a deep seeded hatred for one another stemming from none other than their father. Family bonds and morality are tested, and the film does a decent job of showing rural American life. Nichols himself hails from Arkansas and one would think that his interpretation of this lifestyle is accurate. I won't argue that. The homes in which these people live seem believable enough, and the environment seems like a real place, but when anyone other than Shannon opens their mouth the film borders on parody, making us laugh at these men's schemes rather than making us understand them. It is a story in which these men are trapped by their environment and unreconciled hatred. The funeral scene in the beginning was supposed to solve this, but only fueled the fire. When the guns start blazing and the bodies start dropping, the movie falls into ordinary melodramatic garbage that we've been reading since the beginning of time. Michael Shannon deserves better, and perhaps in the upcoming "Revolutionary Road" he'll finally be recognized. "Shotgun Stories" should have done this, but instead leaves the actor desperately trying to carry everyone else on his back, which he does for a while. Someone better get him some icy hot and put him in a good film right away.