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| Imogen Poots stars in Green Room |
Green Room, Red Laces
Rotten Tomatoes Plot: Green Room is a brilliantly crafted and wickedly fun horror-thriller starring Patrick Stewart as a diabolical club owner who squares off against an unsuspecting but resilient young punk band. Down on their luck punk rockers The Ain't Rights are finishing up a long and unsuccessful tour, and are about to call it quits when they get an unexpected booking at an isolated, run-down club deep in the backwoods of Oregon. What seems merely to be a third-rate gig escalates into something much more sinister when they witness an act of violence backstage that they weren't meant to see. Now trapped backstage, they must face off against the club's depraved owner, Darcy Banker (Stewart), a man who will do anything to protect the secrets of his nefarious enterprise. But while Darcy and his henchmen think the band will be easy to get rid of, The Ain't Rights prove themselves much more cunning and capable than anyone expected, turning the tables on their unsuspecting captors and setting the stage for the ultimate life-or-death showdown. Intense, emotional, and ingeniously twisted, Green Room is genre filmmaking at its best and most original. Jeremy Saulnier continues to build his reputation as one of the most exciting and distinctive directors working today, with a movie that's completely different from his previous, highly acclaimed Blue Ruin, but which is just as risk-taking and even more full of twists. The entire cast deliver first-rate performances, but Patrick Stewart gives a transformative and brilliantly devious turn as Darcy-elegant yet lethal, droll yet terrifying, Stewart makes the film simply unforgettable. Stars Anton Yelchin & Imogen Poots.
Punk rock + white supremacists = trouble in Saulnier's Green Room, an overtly gruesome thriller that combines bad music, bits of humor and enough hatred/violence to make a PR rep scream out loud (inside joke.) It benefits from some star power (Yelchin, Poots & Stewart) but highbrow, it ain't. You will, however, learn a thing or two about life: Box cutters are very sharp, dogs aren't necessarily man's best friend and "We should split up," is really bad advice. Individually, Stewart shines (again) as a villain; but it's Poots, who steals the show with motley one-liners and surprising/lethal survival skills.
Grade: B-
