It’s already becoming a thing of cinema-legend that Patrick Stewart, on reading Jeremy Saulnier’s (Blue Ruin, Murder Party) Green Room script, was so unsettled that he had to wander around his house to check that it was secure before pouring himself a huge whiskey to finish reading. This was thirty-odd pages in.
We can’t blame him. Green Room is the dictionary definition of brutal.
After gigging around the country, low on money and let down again by a guy who has booked them to play a tiny venue where they earn about £6 each, punk band The Ain’t Rights accept a gig in dive bar in the middle of nowhere, playing to a bunch of “boots and braces” skinheads. Herein lies the initial unease – the skinheads are, as you’d expect, less than welcoming - and they become even less so when the band decide to play a cover of Dead Kennedy’s Nazi Punks, Fuck Off.
However, the shit really hits the fan when the band witness a murder in the – you guessed it – green room and are taken hostage, but only, they are assured, until the police arrive…
What follows is part war movie, part slasher and part thriller, as the band and the skinheads are pitted against each other – one group trying to get home and the other trying to cover their crimes. Weighing in at a relatively short hour and a half Saulnier leaves no time for fancy exposition, but prefers to just throw his audience into the brutality of it all. And it works. A master of misdirection regarding both plot devices and characters, I found that every time I started to connect to a character they were quickly killed off, which was sometimes frustrating, but ultimately allowed the cast to be pared down and for focus to be given to the incredibly tight plot and small band of characters that ultimately end the war.
Although the film is ultra-violent, we’re not subjected to gory scenes that move towards torture porn. The violence is quick, devastating and at points hard to watch, however Saulnier stops short of turning the gore into a spectacle and instead prefers to focus on the ‘what ifs’ and the psychological toll meted out to the band.
Whereas Patrick Stewart is brilliantly eerie as Darcy, the sociopathic gang leader who gives little to no fucks about his skinheads or his enemies, it is Imogen Poots who steals the show as Amber, one of the skinheads who is also witness to the crime and has to decide where she stands between band and fascist. A great supporting cast (I’m looking at you Alia Shawkat) means that even the more minor characters are instantly engaging.
Green Room is definitely the kind of film that requires days of processing and more than a couple of Scotchs to shake off. If you like your films brutal, unrelenting and bold then it is definitely worth your time.
Green Room will be showing at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 26 May 2016.
Green Room Trailer
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