Americana (2023)
Americana is a modern-day Western that is a cross between the movies of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, but that doesn't automatically make it a bad knockoff. In actuality, writer/director Tony Tost's film works fairly well and has good performances across the board.
The plot follows various characters as
they all attempt to acquire an extremely valuable Native American Ghost Shirt.
We have Lefty (Paul Walter Hauser), a lonesome cowboy who tends to propose to
women after the third or fourth date, and he is convinced by Penny Jo (Sydney
Sweeney), a waitress with a speech impediment, to steal the Ghost Shirt for
monetary gain. There is also a single mom Mandy (Halsey), who's in a bad
relationship with walking garbage by the name of Dillon (Eric Dane) and wants a
way out. Meanwhile, Mandy's young son Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman) thinks he is
the reincarnation of Sitting Bull. Also out for the Ghost Shirt is scumbag
antiquities dealer Roy (Simon Rex), as well as the local Lakota people, led by
Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon).
The film culminates in a violent
confrontation, but it isn't totally predictable how it gets there. Sometimes,
this reviewer wasn't sure where the story was going—in a good way.
For every occasional stilted line of
dialog, there are oodles of snappy interchanges. Some of the liveliest moments
are between Bergman and McClarnon, so much so that maybe Americana
should have been a road picture with these two characters.
