by Greg Kaczynski

Created on: April 29, 2008

Shotgun Stories is a masterpiece.

Experiencing Jeff Nichols' somber, terrifying Shotgun Stories as it ruthlessly unfurls its violent tentacles is exhilarating. In his feature debut, Nichols creates a world that is understated and real, a world that everyone is familiar with, maybe not from personal ordeals, but from a gut feeling. Shotgun Stories is about the pettiness of revenge, its cyclical nature, and the knowledge of all involved that it can never amount to anything good.

Son (Michael Shannon), Kid (Barlow Jacobs), and Boy Hayes (Douglas Ligon) were abandoned by their father at a young age, leaving them in a poor part of England, Arkansas with only a disinterested mother to look over them. As time went on, the father reformed his ways and started over. He became a success and started a new family in the good part of town, with nice cars and good clothes. On the day that he dies, the Hayes boys crash their estranged father's funeral and Son says a few honest words of his own, creating a thick layer of tension that doesn't release until the credits roll.

In a nutshell, that is what Shotgun Stories is about, and not much else should be and will be said about the plot. It's not knowing what's going to happen next that makes this film tick away so mercilessly.

The vast, emptiness of England, Arkansas is captured handily by Nichols with extremely wide-angle, panoramic shots of the flatlands, and near-abandoned streets with many buildings falling into disrepair. This is the world he gives us: a city on the brink of desperation, a population that seems to be entirely at a dead end, a breeding ground for excessive bravado. It's a small town, and word gets around; reputations are valuable here, pride equally so.

Within this bleakness, he gives us three boys who are living on their own, trying to survive and still take care of each other. The actors are phenomenal as they bring these men to life, men who have had to fend for themselves their whole lives, tough guys. Yet they still culture a genuine, layered quality to each of the characters, a quiet, sympathetic reality that exists behind every measured interaction.

The unusual thing is that by normal standards, these boys would be the "bad guys", the trouble makers, the kids from the wrong side of the tracks, but there is an understood humanity to their actions, and they somehow become misguided heroes.

On the other hand, the rival family, the four half-brothers, really aren't terrible people either. They're

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