Green Room, 2015.
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier.
Starring Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner.
SYNOPSIS:
A punk band fight for survival in a neo-Nazi bar after witnessing a murder.
As if you haven’t been spoilt enough by Second Sight Films in the past year with their fantastic limited edition 4K releases, the label now brings you Jeremy Saulnier’s 2015 survival thriller Green Room in a glorious new package to sit on your shelf alongside the more established classics that have been so beautifully presented.
If you have not seen it before, Green Room sees struggling punk rock band The Ain’t Rights – singer Tiger (Callum Turner), guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat), bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole) – accept a gig at a remote bar that happens to be a neo-Nazi hangout. The band play their set, take the money and are about to leave, but when Pat goes back into the green room to collect Sam’s phone he sees the body of a young woman he had just seen out front lying on the floor with a knife in her head.
Pat panics, things escalate and the band lock themselves in the green room as the neo-Nazi’s try to get in, forcing them to call upon their leader and club owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart) to come down and sort things out. Darcy is intent on wiping out any witnesses to the crime and as his cover-up tactics become more elaborate, The Ain’t Rights find themselves in a battle of survival as the trigger-happy mob outside grow in numbers.
It is fairly obvious from the start that writer/director Jeremy Saulnier is going for authenticity when it comes to the music side of Green Room, as the extensive list of bands in the credits (Napalm Death, Slayer and Obituary don’t usually make it onto many movie soundtracks) and the constant blaring of punk, grind and death metal testify, and that is a good place to start if your central characters are in a band. Hardcore punk and death/thrash metal is built on intensity – from the downtuned guitars, guttural vocals and superhuman blast beats – and the club setting is fantastic, allowing the music to create the necessary atmosphere as the audience moshes, the music gets louder and the obvious tension from being in a room full of angry neo-Nazis all combine to make an electrifying plot.
However, as with most instances of fictional bands in movies – especially punk and metal bands – the portrayal isn’t quite right. By its very nature, punk is a movement defined by outspoken opinions, politics, fashions and generally being obnoxious, and The Ain’t Rights ain’t really any of those things, coming across more like a broke indie rock band with no real attitude or agenda. That isn’t to say the actors’ performances are off, because they’re not, but the way the band are written and presented doesn’t feel authentic – they are obviously not right-wing extremists like the crowd they are playing to, but that is all you get from them – and proper punk/metal is nothing if not authentic.
But the music and the band performing it is only a small factor of the movie, and the real intense material comes when Patrick Stewart comes into the frame. Obviously better known for his more benevolent roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Men, Stewart was an inspired choice for the casting of Darcy, a man who is very sure of himself and the situation building around him, and his almost zen-like back-and-forth with Pat through a locked door is just as chilling as any of the brutal violence we see later on. The fact that he looks and dresses like any ordinary middle-aged man you would see in the street on any given day adds another layer of fear to his calm demeanour, as Nazis have always been portrayed onscreen as either wearing a definable military uniform or with swastika tattoos and obvious Nazi symbolism; the cartoon caricatures of The Blues Brothers or Animal House these are not, and when Darcy does use racist language, it is used sparingly and is not sensationalised as it would be if Quentin Tarantino had written it, and coming from Patrick Stewart’s mouth it sounds even more chilling.
That said, Saulnier is a little playful with his nastier characters at times, with understated one-liners and some dark humour to offset the tension when necessary, but the overly-serious portrayal of the band before they are trapped in the club doesn’t really help to make those characters as sympathetic as perhaps they would be had we known anything about them other than they are a band and they aren’t right-wing fascists. Nevertheless, once the siege is underway those kinds of flaws become secondary to the cat-and-mouse games that make up the remainder of the running time, and although the violence – when it happens – is quick and Saulnier does not linger on it, the shock of it is all the more effective.
As is customary with these Second Sight special editions, you get the movie and the extras on standard Blu-ray and 4K UHD, housed in a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork, art cards and 120-page book with new essays by various critics and academics. Extras on the discs include two audio commentaries – one by writer/director Jeremy Saulnier, and the other by Reyna Cervantes and Prince Jackson – along with several cast and crew interviews, plus an archive making-of featurette. Plenty to get stuck into, and plenty of different perspectives to add to your enjoyment of a flawed but tense and exciting thriller.
So, as a package we can chalk Green Room up as another success for Second Sight Films in terms of content and presentation. Whether Green Room is a movie that warrants a 4K UHD upgrade is another matter entirely, as it isn’t a movie with overly rich visuals or a wide colour palette. The print is crisp and clean, but the bulk of the movie is shot inside a dark club with various shades of green and black for lighting, so whether this is a massive upgrade from any previous release is a matter for your eyes and home cinema setup to decide. However, if you have yet to own this movie then this is the version to go for, if the collectors don’t snap them all up first.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
