American Violence

American Violence

Does capital punishment represent justified retribution, or is it nothing more than another link in the chain of violence that has become so ingrained in America’s psyche it can’t be broken? It’s a common theme in movies and books, and one that American Violence a movie so bad it barely even qualifies as such feigns interest in by clumsily posing questions about how violence begets violence.

This is a shockingly inept work, replete with dialogue most teens would edit and a plot that defies logic at every turn. There are plenty of true stories that could shine a light on the arguable hypocrisy of an eye for an eye system, but American Violence appears stubbornly uninterested in tackling real issues, opting to deliver a generic crime thriller instead and not even a good one.

Denise Richards playing nuclear physicist Christmas Jones opposite Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond might have been laughable, but seeing her here as Dr. Amanda Tyler a renowned psychologist brought in to evaluate death-row inmate Jackson Shea (Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau) will make you want to gouge out your eyes. The request for Dr. Tyler comes from Ben Woods (Columbus Short), who only wants her there for PR reasons; they need to say they spoke to him before they decide not to grant the stay.

But she takes it seriously anyway, setting up with Shea much like Clarice set up with Dr. Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, down to the standalone cell in the middle of the room. And that’s where any similarities end between this film and Demme’s masterpiece: director Timothy Woodward Jr doesn’t give a damn about making a doctor-psycho thriller; he barely even seems interested enough in their relationship to include Richards for 90% of his runtime.

Shea (or rather Lyman-Mersereau) looks like Ryan Gosling if he were shrunk in the wash, and his backstory is as generic and predictable as you’d expect. Abused by an uncle as a child; falls in with a criminal enterprise that knocks over doctors who are taking cash payments and then billing insurance companies; crosses paths with an even tougher bad guy; gets a woman involved, of course; has to do some prison time during which he’s frequently raped (in sequences that are genuinely uncomfortable, if only because they’re so amateurishly staged); also has to deal with an evil warden (played by Bruce Dern with why am I here nonchalance). It’s one of those films where even the flashbacks can’t keep their stories straight: there’s a scene between some cops and a tough guy Shea robbed that can’t exist in Shea’s story to Tyler, because he’s not there.

The top to bottom uniformity of bad performances in “American Violence” would make an empathetic person pity the actors. Among the writer’s favorite lines are “We’re all just caged animals with animal instincts,” and “The only reason you’re still alive is I haven’t killed you yet.” Shea is a boring story, thematically or narratively, and the only good moment in this movie is when New England Patriots all star Rob Gronkowski shows up as a tough guy.

Not that he’s particularly good (though he’s plenty large enough to be believable as a bodyguard), but at least it’s something. Then he leaves and it goes back to being cliché and pretentious again. There are some movies that are so bad they don’t even have anything to say, but “American Violence” can’t even be fun as B-movie pulp.

Watch American Violence For Free On Gomovies.