by Jason Daniel Baker

Created on: January 22, 2012

Red State (2011) Starring Michael Parks, Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollak, Molly Hagan, Deborah Aquila, Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun, Anna Gunn, James Parks, Patrick Fischler, Kerry Bishe, Jennifer Schwallbach, Cooper Thornton, Taylor Briggs, Marc Blucas, John Lacy, Michael Angarano.

Directed by Kevin Smith.

Running Time: 88 minutes.

Rating: Restricted (Brief Nudity, Coarse Language, Brutal Horror Violence)

"People just do the strangest things when they believe they're entitled"

Three ornery teenage boys are lured via a 'sexted' message into what they believe is tryst with a lonely housewife (Leo) in a trailer park. She gives them beer laced with a sedative and when they wake up they find themselves restrained in the church of doomsday preacher Pastor Abin Cooper (Parks) whose congregation/extended family has been murdering patrons of a local gay bar and are evidently set to do the same to the boys.

Tracking the group is the ATF drawn in at the behest of an ineffectual local sheriff (Root) compromised by his use of illegal immigrant male prostitutes. Shots are fired at the compound and the situation deteriorates into full-on combat with deployment of state-of-the-art military firepower. The congregation is as equally well-armed as the ATF - an incompetent group led by an ambitious commander (Goodman) determined to kill everyone in the church lest there be witnesses to a second Waco.

The fundamentalist sect believes that 'End Times' are nigh and that the faster they die in the service of their savior the more quickly they can be with him in heaven. It is a mindset of no earthly good or sense. Caught in the crossfire are the one boy among the three abducted that wasn't killed and an older daughter who only half believes what she has been taught by the sect and its preacher. They probably won't get out alive and more than likely nobody else will either.

So which is the more urgent threat to personal freedom in modern times? The state or extremists with a warped interpretation of religious scripture? Are they perhaps a threat to each other? If so what does it mean for people who do not identify with other side and merely want to be left alone? In the very best film (or more to the point the only one that doesn't blow) of Kevin Smith's career we see this dramatically play out in a fashion that is nothing less than riveting whilst simultaneously working as biting social satire of nothing less than exceptional quality.

Some would say the American government

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