Red, White & Blue

British filmmaker Simon Rumley (‘The Living and the Dead’) continues to plough his indie-vidual furrow with this bleak but moving look at blighted blue-collar life in Austin, Texas. The film’s three interlocking segments are each told from a different character’s point of view, that of promiscuous Erica (Amanda Fuller), aspiring musician Franki (Marc Senter) and Iraq veteran Nate (Noah Taylor). Even after Erica strikes up a tentative platonic relationship with protective Nate, she continues with her self-annihilating sexual encounters. But it’s the knock-on effects of an early drunken gang-bang with Franki and his fellow band members that ignite the film’s ultraviolent climax. In the last third, Rumley’s forced naturalism gives way to something more akin to an early Abel Ferrara or Wes Craven revenge movie. There are some loose ends and credibility problems, not least in the sub-plot about Franki’s ill mother and his possibly having infected her with donated blood. Yet once again, a pulsing vein of emotion runs through the film's bloodletting.