Film - Green Room

Out now on DVD and Blu-ray, a reminder of Ren Zelen's thoughts on Green Room when she watched it at London Film Festival last year...

Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Writer: Jeremy Saulnier
Starring: Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat Mark Webber, Joe Cole, Macon Blair

One of the more anticipated movies of the film festival, Green Room proves to be an ultra-violent, rather more conventional, but generally satisfying sequel to Jeremy Saulnier’s critically acclaimed revenge-thriller, Blue Ruin.

When a struggling punk band ‘The Ain’t Rights’ play a last-minute booking at a remote, seedy bar, it turns out to be a meeting place for a neo-Nazi gang . The dive is packed with shaven-headed, swastika-inked white supremacists, who spit and throw bottles when the band play their first number, a spirited cover of the Dead Kennedys' classic "Nazi Punks Fuck Off."

Unsettled by the atmosphere of barely supressed violence, the only thing the band want to do is play their set, collect their much-needed pay and leave as soon as possible. But just before they are due to depart, bass guitarist Pat (Anton Yelchin) slips back into the dressing room to collect a misplaced mobile phone and accidentally witnesses something that he should never have seen.

The band then find themselves herded back into the room and held hostage by a thuggish gang, all of which are ruled by unquestioning loyalty to their leader Darcy (Patrick Stewart), who is determined to make sure that the band can never tell what they now know.

Stewart gives a masterly performance as a man inured to casual violence and used to having his orders obeyed without demur. He plays the character with ruthlessness and a merciless, calculating menace (light-years away from the noble Captain Picard). Generally though it’s a great ensemble piece, including an outstanding Imogen Poots as Amber, a gang-member also caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The movie has the taut, vicious, gritty feel of shockers such as Deliverance - if you actually enjoy films with punk music, gory violence and pit-bull dogs trained to rip out a throat, this one might well be for you.

Image - LFF