Double Revenge
There is a cycle to Erica's (Amanda Fuller) life; she hits a bar at night, gets a little loaded picks up a guy or more than one and has sex with them before leaving having scrubbing the filth of sex off of her before returning home. But then there is Nate (Noah Taylor) an honourably discharged vet who doesn't care for sex with her and wants to get to know her as a person, not something Erica is use to. But things then take a strange turn when former one night stand Franki (Marc Senter) shows up creating an uneasy tension between the three of them.
How slow can you go? Look I know not every movie needs to skip a long at a rate of knots but some times it can become as dreary as watching paint dry by watching a movie which attempts to be different. This is the major issue which "Red White & Blue" has as the pacing, lack of atmosphere and lack of initial character depth makes it frankly utterly boring and this is a movie which opens with Erica ending up in bed with not one, not two but three guys. In fact the opening few scenes which aim to establish the character of Erica feature plenty of sex which the most shocking thing about it being how cold it leaves you. And so it goes on because director Simon Rumley has a style which you will either like or hate with long periods of silence and a look which makes it feel like a cross between a 70s movie and a low budget movie.
But here is the twist on this as in between the painfully slow set up is this aspect of intrigue as to why Erica feels the need to have unprotected sex with so many men. We are also curious about Nate who seems to have a bit of a psychotic side. And then we get the revelation which turns this painfully slow movie on its head in to a horror with Franki learning something which leads him back to Erica which in turn cause issues with Nate and yes I am keeping this loose as it is in the detail where "Red White & Blue" is good, where it becomes surprising and shocking. There is also something actually creative as to how one thing leads to another and leads to this chain of events which eventually become gruesome.
What this all boils down to is that "Red White & Blue" leaves me feeling conflicted because the slowness of it all is excruciatingly painful as is the styling. But there is a creative side to it which makes it intriguing and in fairness it does become the horror movie you might have expected. The thing is that for some wading through the first half to get to where it gets good is going to be too much like hard work.
