AMERICANA
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Simon Rex, Eric Dane, and Zahn McClarnon
Director: Tony Tost
ADRIANO
Americana wants to embody the tone of something you'd see in a Coen Brothers or Quentin Tarantino movie, but falls short of the excitement those filmmakers tend to offer. I have nothing against most of the cast members (Sydney Sweeney is slowly losing any goodwill I have for her) since they do provide entertaining characters, but unfortunately, they never go beyond what the surface-level plot allows. I admit the film's progressive absurdity does provide some fun, but Americana doesn't have that much to offer as it mostly lacks memorability.
BODE
It used to be that every emerging filmmaker wanted to be Quentin Tarantino or The Coen Brothers, resulting in plenty of “knockoffs” aiming to reach the heights of their respective works. While those never went away exactly, they became less part of the zeitgeist as Hollywood became increasingly obsessed with franchises. Writer-director Tony Tost’s Americana reminds me of that era. It’s definitely more fun than the worst of that genre (its strongly assembled cast - including a standout Halsey - helps), but it’s a bit too uneven and derivative to be as everlasting as the best of the bunch. It’s passable, but just barely.
QUENTIN
Despite a cast of performers who have proven themselves in (mostly) supporting roles, writer-director Tony Tost wastes them all in the most boring collection of Coen Bros. and Quentin Tarantino tropes I’ve ever seen. Americana has all their tropes too: quirky characters, non-linear storytelling, a vintage vibe, and the stolen macguffin at the center of it all. I don’t understand how one so obviously apes such directorial legends without capturing at least a smidge of their witty humor, aptitude for excitingly violent suspense, or knack for interesting dialogue. This is a bad cover song of a movie, which makes the great soundtrack kind of ironic.
