I don't know if Kevin Smith was smoking too much or not enough pot when he wrote Red State, but it was clearly not the right amount. Red State is a movie which can't decide on a plot. The truly amazing thing about Red State is how entertaining and coherent it manages to stay while completely changing plots every ten minutes.
The movie starts out by introducing us to three adolescent males who want to go have consequence-free sex with a female stranger and because no movie can have consequence-free consequence-free sex they are drugged at taken captive by the Westboro-like anti-gay assholes of the Five Points Church. It turns out that the church has been doing a To Catch A Predator-style sting operation, but instead of pedophiles they are catching homosexuals and instead of a gentle televised chat with Chris Hanson they are being ritualistically murdered. Now, if you are an anti-gay religious zealot who believes all homosexuals should burn in hell, this is actually a pretty good plan. (Also, I hate you more than you can possibly imagine and I'm pretty sure God isn't too fond of you either.) However, in the movie, this scene plays out as a ten minute speech about the evils of homosexuality immediately proceeding the attempted murder of three boys who wanted to have heterosexual sex. I mean, stay focused religious assholes. There are a lot of different people you can hate. If you can't keep your rage focused on a single group, you're bound to be overwhelmed. If you hate gay people, you should be encouraging heterosexuality, not (literally) condemning it.
So about this time, one of the boys use the broken bones of the ritualistically murdered gay guy to escape and we are set up for a Hostel-style violent escape movie. The first escapee leaves his friend behind and makes a run for it before being gunned down in the armory. Then, the second boy manages to magically undo his own bindings and get to the armory undetected. Having gone unnoticed thus far he proceeded to the chapel where all the religious assholes have gathered as to make sure that they know he is escaping. Still undetected and carrying an automatic weapon in a room filled with his unarmed captors (who apparently have a hard time counting to two otherwise they would be armed and looking for him) as well as his surviving friend, he chooses to abandon his huge tactical advantage and run directly through the congregation making no attempt to rescue his friend or kill his captors. He is promptly shot in the back for his stupidity.
This is when the ATF is given orders to kill everyone in the compound setting up an anti-government message. Every one of the ATF agents is initially reluctant to murder a bunch of kids in cold blood, but they get over that in time. Time in this case being approximately ten seconds as a potential rebellion against authority subplot is abandoned as soon as it is brought up.
Now, the woman in the compound who takes care of the kids is set up to be the hero. She frees the remaining boy and tells him her plan. They're going to easily slip past the murdering band of heavily armed ATF agents surrounding the compound, gather the attention of the world's media, and get them to the compound which is at least 100 miles away to shine a light on this injustice and garner public condemnation of the government's actions, all in time to prevent the ATF from breaking in and killing everyone. They are promptly shot in the face for their stupidity.
Now, the ATF is on the verge of finishing their murderous rampage, but what's that noise, which is debilitatingly loud despite being quieter than the non-stop gunfire of the past half hour? It's the Rapture! The religious nuts were right! Is that Alanis Morrisette! No, it's the neighborhood kids with a giant air horn who are that magic distance away where they can't hear the constant noise of automatic rifles, but their air horn can still be clearly and loudly heard. They are trying to fake the first sign of the Rapture because insulting the beliefs of a fundamentalist religious sect with violent tendencies is a great strategy for dispute resolution.
So around this time, the ATF changes their mind on the whole killing unarmed suspects thing and decides that their just going to hold them forever without charges because they can totally do that. No one is ever going to miss those suburban white kids or notice that the news-making religious cult has dropped off the face of the Earth because...because...nope can't think of anything. Somebody's going to ask a question or two.
This is where Kevin Smith leaves us, questioning what we just watched. Several potentially interesting plots dropped before they are allowed to flourish and a potentially brilliant the-nuts-were-right twist ending comes to naught. Kevin Smith has officially announced his retirement from film making following his next project, but I can't help but feel he should have hung it up after Dogma, which remains one of my favorite comedies of all-time. I guess it is impossible to know when a career has crashed and when it's just a temporary slump, but Kevin Smith knows he's lost it and he's getting out before he has completely ruined his reputation like certain other formally great filmmakers **cough**M. Night**cough** and he should at least be commended for that.
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