Kevin Smith
Red State

Kevin Smith is the rebellious author who, with a shoestring budget, shot "Clerks" (1994), an independent gem of rare cutting strength, capable of carving out a niche in the highly complex world of the star-spangled underground cinema. A character outside the norms, extremely critical of politics, conventions, and the political establishment, with "Dogma" (1999) he further expanded the audience of his haters. In 2010, after "Cop Out," a disgraceful film with Bruce Willis, Smith even considered leaving that cinematic world where he had never been well-liked. "Red State" (2011) was supposed to be his last work before a break for reflection which, thanks also to the critical response, never happened.

Smith changes genre and leaves behind that "political comedy" and personal style that marked his early works. "Red State" is a harsh thriller that tells the story of Pastor Abin Cooper (a sumptuous Michael Parks), leader of a Christian religious sect that sees "sexual perversions," particularly homosexuality, as the cause of society's degeneration. Three young students unknowingly fall into the clutches of these madmen, and Officer Keenan (John Goodman) is tasked with solving the issue, when the sect members barricade themselves in their home, a reference and homage to Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13."

As mentioned, Smith changes genre but his perspective remains just as accusatory and devastating as "Dogma": there it was irony against religion, here it is absolute violence in a sort of portrayal of what is really in the "holy scriptures." Accustomed to Islamic fundamentalism, the horror of Christian fundamentalism seems not to belong to the reality in which we live. To this kind of harsh critique, he adds the ease of obtaining weapons in the USA, a pet peeve of another like Michael Moore. The external enemy, so dear to U.S. politics, is increasingly often an internal enemy, and weapons are the means by which an ordinary citizen becomes a perpetrator. The third level of attack on American society comes with the blow against the police forces entrusted with resolving the situation: Smith stages officials who eliminate potential witnesses, others who don't even know what their job is, and most importantly, the final choice of those giving the orders, ready to save themselves and their image and career rather than the lives of humans they should be protecting.

In "Red State" there is no true protagonist and the screenplay progresses in stages: first, the three boys appear who will be the bait of the story, then arrives the mad "priest" played by Michael Parks, and finally the state's big face, John Goodman. These are three different horizons and three representations that Smith stabs with his sharp and politically incorrect cinema. From the young, all about alcohol and even ready for easy sex with women in trailers, to the intransigent religion leading to violence, to the incapable, colluded, and unpunished state. A concentrate of brutality and fierce criticism of that exploded America that Smith has always mocked, starting from the lightning "Clerks." The almost annoying and jolty use of handheld camera makes the story appear almost mockumentary-like, rendering it even more realistic, where humans have nothing human, none of those Christian teachings that should be the ultimate aim of the religious environments ridiculed by the film.

“Red State” is the work that revived Kevin Smith's career, as well as his most devastating, alienating and spiteful opus, which traced a new thriller-influenced course of which the recent "Tusk" is also an emanation. Needless to say, "Red State" never reached theaters in Italy...