Americana is a contemporary Western that manages to fulfill the blood-and-guns expectations of style followers, whereas additionally turning an accusatory eye in the direction of how Native People are considered in modern (that means white) society. First-time function director Tony Tost, who served as showrunner for Season 2 of Peacock’s Poker Face, makes this bigger level in a busy story stuffed with tasty characters and cross-connected plot strains, whereas his serio-comic script retains the bullets — and the surprises — flying.
If all this appears like a Coen Brothers movie written by Quentin Tarantino, that’s as a result of it typically acts like one. Tost’s non-linear script is talky, darkly humorous and regionally particular; one can think about Tarantino writing the scene the place a murderous villain at a dusty roadside diner orders a Cobb salad with French dressing. In moments like these, Americana seems like an unconvincing assortment of Western tropes and directorial theft. However that may deny Tost his due credit score. In Americana, he manages to mix disparate parts right into a smooth-running and pleasurable reminder that generally the highway to a white man’s riches runs by way of Native American land.
Americana
3
/5
- Launch Date
-
August 15, 2025
- Runtime
-
110 minutes
- Director
-
Tony Tost
- Writers
-
Tony Tost
- Producers
-
Aaron L. Gilbert, Michael R. Williams, Terry Dougas, Ali Jazayeri, Jason Material, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis, Steven Thibault, Alex Saks, David Gendron, Jean-Luc De Fanti, Suraj Maraboyina, Bavand Karim
Halsey Goes from Rock Star to Film Star
Americana’s greatest function, apart from DP Nigel Bluck’s desaturated widescreen lensing, is its rock-solid forged. Sydney Sweeney is sweetly affecting reverse Paul Walter Hauser, who’s grow to be certainly one of Hollywood’s most persistently fascinating actors. The massive shock, nevertheless, is the efficiency given by three-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Halsey.
Coiffed and clothed to resemble rocker Joan Jett, Halsey is a pure as Mandy, a single mom in South Dakota hardened by circumstance and dreaming of a greater life. Mandy wallows in despair within the middle-of-nowhere double extensive she shares together with her abusive boyfriend Dillon (Eric Dane) and her younger son Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman). Cal spends a lot time in entrance of the TV absorbing early Hollywood’s pitiable depiction of Native People that he begins claiming to be the reincarnation of legendary Lakota chief Sitting Bull.
Sydney Sweeney Provides a Candy Efficiency
Americana’s central plot revolves across the more and more violent pursuit of a Lakota ghost shirt, an precise sacred garment from the late nineteenth century that the Lakota individuals believed would shield them from bullets from white settlers. In Tost’s intelligent palms, the shirt involves replicate how respectfully or dismissively the characters view Native American tradition. To Dillon, the ghost shirt means a hefty payday when he’s employed by sleazeball antiquities supplier Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex) to steal it from the house of a condescending personal collector who retains the shirt in a show case to indicate off to his wealthy mates.
Dillon and Roy Lee focus on their felonious plan at an area diner, the place they’re overheard by Lefty Ledbetter (Hauser), a lonely warfare veteran who craves love so badly that he’s susceptible to proposing marriage to a girl after 4 dates. Together with the diner’s shy, stuttering waitress, Penny Jo (Sweeney), Lefty concocts a parallel scheme to steal the precious ghost shirt, so Penny Jo can bankroll her transfer to Nashville to pursue a singing profession. Sweeney and Hauser make a terrific pair, utilizing sheer charisma and star energy to take advantage of out of the least developed relationship within the movie. Sweeney, whose head is encased in a cascade of curly pink hair, effortlessly conveys Penny Jo’s retiring nature, which performs nicely off Hauser’s aw-shucks vulnerability.
All Roads Result in Bloody Violence
After Mandy makes use of violent means to take possession of the ghost shirt, Cal runs into a gaggle of revolutionary-minded Native People led by Ghost Eye (the terrific Zahn McClarnon from A&E’s Longmire, which Tost co-wrote and co-produced). Ghost Eye is Tost’s best curveball, one which shakes up Cal’s TV-inspired view of the realm’s Indigenous individuals. In one of many movie’s greatest scenes, Cal’s harmless stereotyping upsets Ghost Eye, whose group was impressed by the Black Panthers. When Cal insists he is the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, Ghost Eye retorts, “Child, this ain’t precisely the golden age of cultural appropriation.” The one factor they do agree on is that the ghost shirt ought to be returned to Ghost Eye and his anti-colonialist cohorts.
Ultimately, everybody winds up on the Wyoming compound of Mandy’s father, which is the place Tost and editor Peter McNulty considerably lose focus. On the compound, the identification of Mandy’s father is revealed, additionally explaining how she turned estranged from her household. It is a weird flip, nevertheless it’s consistent with the offbeat nature of Tost’s story. However then Tost unfurls back-to-back shootout climaxes, which comprise a big chunk of the movie’s overlong wrap-up. By that time, nevertheless, Americana has already gained us over with attraction, profitable performances and an articulation of Native American issues that feels neither didactic nor scolding. Americana feels each contemporary and by-product, which solely proves that the Western stays an accommodating style as huge and open because the South Dakota prairie.
Americana, from Lionsgate, opens in theaters on August 15