Customer Reviews

Shotgun Stories

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First-time director Jeff Nichols managed to create this amazing minimalist film on a shoestring budget. I was impressed with how so much was told but at times hardly anything was happening. A worthy independent with a big-budget production feel to it.

The cast was all recruited from nearby regions, including Michael Shannon, who gave a stellar performance as the lead brother. He is one of those actors where so much is said just by their minimal facial expressions. There are only a couple of familiar faces in the cast, otherwise this was an independent film all the way, but you would not know with the excellent acting by everyone.

The film takes place (and is filmed) in Arkansas, including areas in and around Keo, England and Little Rock. My HD comment goes to the massive amounts of landscapes and topography that are shown throughout the film. The widescreen ratio beautifully displayed rural Arkansas farms, sunsets, and small town decay; the best I have see in a southern movie in years. I would love to see this artwork in Blu.

The story is about three brothers living a simple existence, two work at a fish farm while the third moonlights as part-time teacher. Their bland livers are scattered with normal wants, including one who wants to get married, another wants to maintain a relationship with his son while dealing with his gambling and familial separations, and the last brother just ekes out a living from his van while coaching middle school kids in basketball. Their lives are shattered with violence when their estranged father dies and they decide to attend his funeral. A feud erupts between the dad's newer family and theirs as they all try to cope with their spite and hatred of each other.

The story develops slowly but it reflects the pace of life there so eloquently. The script and scenes seemed so accurate of that lifestyle, including a sequence where the main characters run an extension cord into their home's backyard, connect it to an residential AC unit and set it on a picnic bench to keep cool while drinking beer. In another scene the van brother runs a hot-wired cord from his vehicle's motor to a blender so he can make drinks. Lots of these local subtleties that make for a worthwhile film that deserves to be seen. The soundtrack has some great cuts of local bands and is scored with a beautiful sounding instrument that is described in the commentary.

The DVD has a brief photo mantage, a director's commentary, and a music only track of the film. SPOILER: The artwork on the front of the DVD should be ignored as it contradicts the whole sequence of the film (the dog being in that shotgun scene).

This will be on my recommendation list, but judging from the theatrical release spread (2 screens) and no advertising budget, I am afraid it will get overlooked.

Indie Wire has been all abuzz with recent comments by former Miramax president Mark Gill that the "Sky is falling" on the American Indie film scene. "Shotgun Stories" offers evidence to the contrary. It's a real film, with real human emotion, with believable characters, story and setting. Nothing rings false. That is so monumentally rare in global cinema that it makes me proud that the film is American. And this is no flag-waiver fare. As a matter of fact it is politically opinionless. The concerns of a small inter-familial war can most definitely be symbolic of certain recent larger conflicts, but only on a universal level, in that all violence escalates from a certain point, and that start when viewed in hindsight is usually petty, but the damage unrepairable.
The camera work is marvelous, the cast led by Michael Shannon is impeccable, and film is quietly moving. It's a true throwback to the maverick 1970s. The DVD even has the Lucero score on an isolated track, which I've let run in the background a few times while tending to household chores. I didn't get to catch this in theaters, and I really wish I had. Thank god for DVD.

This is a surprisingly good independent film.
As if hyper-transported into the rural southeast and placed smack dab into the porch of the Hayes brothers; Son, Kid, and Boy. Thusly named by an abusive alcoholic father who abandons them at an early age and finds Jesus. Juxtaposed, a hateful mother bred three hateful men. Each of which provide the audience with a unique and destitute existence in some ways cocoon by an oldest brother Son. There is a strange brew of co-dependence between them.

The crux of the film involves the after effects of a conflict between half brothers (the aforementioned Hayes brothers and a latter set of Hayes brothers established after the father manages to marry again).
Uninvited, Son, Kid, and Boy arrive in everyday attire contrasting the row of white shirts and ties adorned by another four Hayes brothers. Son, presumably the oldest Hayes brother, ask to speak. Widow Hayes grants permission amidst obvious tensions between both sets of brothers.... As if given a hatchet for scalping, Son lets out 30+ years or so of demons and then spits on his father's casket... This event provides the seed for the Hayes and Hayes feud which for all practical purposes was part of a prophecy...

Make no mistake the feeling of a documentary in England Arkansas. Here is time to examine the surroundings, and perhaps time to reflect on familiar footpaths that some viewers experienced in their own life. The landscape and setting are so "as a matter of fact" and real. Just the right amounts of music, surroundings, and quietness to capture the monotone and depressing attributes of a southern small town without distracting from the story line or personal interactions. It's very different and refreshing to see this type of work in contrast to mainstream and block-buster films. In some ways it was reminiscent of "Ulee's Gold" but much better at examining the granulose existence of multiple characters.

Admittedly, "Shotgun Stories" is a film for people that like drama. The characters are superb. Gritty, and clearly depressing at times, but not to the point of spiraling the viewer into an abyss of nausea. It is in fact, captivating even at a slow to moderate pace. Although I feel the title is entirely appropriate, it may mislead a few into thinking Sam Peckinpah is directing. Modern film is so often consistent with revenge which tends to include graphic scenes either in bulk, or in the climax. "Shotgun Stories" plays out all the intensity necessary without anatomical explosion for a hand clinching climax. In today's tense, this is an exceptional film achievement.

Highly Recommended!

Not expecting much from this DVD rental, I was rewarded with one of the best film experiences of the past year. This is film about a blood feud between a reformed alcoholic's two separate families, set in rural Arkansas, and beautifully acted by the mostly superb cast. The backdrop of poverty and truncated aspirations is deftly but lovingly constructed -- as convincing as Faulkner or Cormac Mc Carthy, but using landscape and footage of labor (e.g. cotton gathering or catfish seining) rather than prose. The denouement, though somewhat predictable, is done with such thoughtful restraint that the realism evoked by the first half of the film stays completely undissipated. Makers of big commercial films almost never achieve this. They could learn from this first-time directorial effort.

I watched this film after reading Roger Ebert's review. I was also interested because I really like David Gordon Green's work (producer) as well. It was even better than I expected. The director has a wonderful classical style that lets the action unfold in a natural way and often in real time. Instead of using frenzied handheld work and manic editing, he lets the most violent moments unfold offscreen and focuses instead on the consequences of violence. I loved the time the characters spent looking off into space and brooding and I loved the way they inhabited an unconstrained moral universe that seemed to predate the civil war.

In "Shotgun Stories", writer/director Jeff Nichols places a story of resentment and revenge in rural Arkansas. Three close-knit brothers attend the funeral of their father, who had stopped drinking, become religious, and started a new family after years of abusing his first family. The eldest brother, simply named Son (Michael Shannon), lets loose his hatred for his father at the funeral, setting off a feud with the four sons of his father's second family. Middle brother Boy (Douglas Ligon) is trepidatious about the escalating violence. Youngest brother Kid (Barlow Jacobs) is affable but intensely loyal. When the eldest of the second family's sons, Cleaman (Michael Abbott, Jr.), tries to head off the conflict, Son just can't let go of his bitterness and shame.

A feud unfolds slowly and quietly in America's heartland. The brothers' mounting anger explodes in violence against an eerily uneventful background. There is a very nice score written in part by the director's brother Ben Nichols, which is used sparingly, allowing the isolated and measured quality of life to sink in. The success of this film is due to that tone, which the actors uphold admirably with unsentimental and unself-conscious performances. The feud results partly because some of the brothers are more like their father than they would like to admit, but perhaps even more because they have nothing to do. There is little distraction from the past's sins and the present anger. Films of family feuds are hardly new, but "Shotgun Stories" strikes an interesting note.

The DVD (Liberation 2008): Bonus features include a Photo Gallery with a slide show of production stills, a theatrical trailer (2 min), and 2 audio options for viewing the film. You have the option of watching or listening to the film with only the music sound track, no dialogue or other sounds. There is definitely some good music in "Shotgun Stories", but it's too intermittent to make this option practical. There is also a fairly constant audio commentary by writer/director Jeff Nichols, in which he talks about filming in Arkansas, casting, the actors, the locations, cinematography, story, and his inspirations for various aspects of the film. No subtitles.

Excellent film. I am the 17th reviewers and agree with points made by the previous positive reviews. I think the film makers do an excellent job of fleshing out a character in his environment.

Life is tough and without much future for this guy who would like better. His proud, tough stoic, independent character is adaptive. But this guy is not a hero as in the cowboy films of my youth. He is a tragic figure in my eyes because of the ways in which he holds in his feelings until they come out in ways that just dig him in deeper. Reason does not go very far in resolving things in this town in Arkansas -- but you get the feeling it could but they just don't see that path as something they could trust.

Call it ignorance? -- I am not sure it is so simple. Life is not so easy there. He is a sad product of his environment. You can maybe understand his mother's bitterness and how this rubbed off on her boys and the tragic consequences, but we are not told what SHE suffered through and what made her bitter and hateful. And how much of her husband's nastiness had been having to live with HER. We are left to wonder, but the film gives us a rich enough taste of life there to do some serious wondering. Was the nasty mother a product too of her environment? Elemental fighting, revenge, stand-offs are the most obvious ways to deal with feuds and grudges and they seem to work -- until they get out of hand. Then wham. Although one has to live with a lot of threat etc in the meantime. But then one has to be tough about just day to day living and working and lack of a future.

Picked up this film because I am a fan of Michael Shannon. Over all the film is a bit dull but for an indie flick it's directed and acted quite well. Just the story was lacking a little.

I'd been hoping to see a film that provided a thoughtful treatment of revenge, and this one does. With an undertow of Greek tragedy (the mother seems to fulfill a definition of the name "Antigone"), "Shotgun Stories" forgoes the reflexive fatalism of massacres that achieve little more than the reinforcement of self-gratifying violence coupled to (coupling with?) the pointless emotionalism of most domestic films, finally dwelling on something closer to the truth: that revenge accomplishes nothing but adding to the population of the walking wounded. Or, more accurately in this case, the walking already-wounded. The frank cinematography, understated acting, and the omnipresence of crucial events left just out of sight contribute to a highly authentic articulation of the subject. An excellent use of music, as well.

a movie that may be slow going but it works well.the people seem real with their responses and emotion, i've never been to america so movies have been my main source of information as to how the people live their lives. this movie changed my view on americans dramatically. it shows how simplicity in a movie can overcome and expose the unnecessary complications created with big budgets in some movies. buy it