This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Like the punks and skinheads who inhabit the movie, Jeremy Saulnier's "Green Room" does not screw around; it's a dark thriller that gets right to the blood-dripped heart of the matter.
Saulnier first introduces us to Ain't Rights, a Arlington, Va., punk band scrounging from gig to gig across the West. The four band members — Pat (Anton Yelchin), Reece (Joe Cole), Sam (Alia Shawkat) and Tiger (Callum Turner) — are down to their last dollar, sleeping in the van and siphoning gas to get to the next town.
When a gig near Portland turns out to be less than lucrative — the four of them net $6.88 each — the promoter (David W. Thompson) tries to make good by setting up another show. The place is out of the way, he tells them, and it's not smart to talk politics with the crowd, but the money's good.
When the band get there, they discover what the promoter meant: The bar is a neo-Nazi hangout, with skinheads bouncing off each other in the mosh pit. The musicians perform their set, get their cash and are all set to leave — until they witness a murder in the green room, where a member of the headlining band has stabbed a young woman.
Pat manages to dial 911 on Sam's iPhone, but from there the situation escalates quickly. Soon, the band and the dead girl's friend Amber (Imogen Poots) are holed up in the green room, with a burly bar bouncer (Eric Edelstein) as their hostage.
Outside the door, the bar's white-supremacist owner, Darcy, has arrived on the scene. He's played by Patrick Stewart, of "X-Men" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fame, and you have never seen the chrome-domed Shakespearean actor this nasty. Stewart's performance as Darcy, who puts on a calm front to the band while inwardly scheming to make the crime scene and its witnesses go away, is a master class in carefully calibrated menace.
Other standouts in the cast are Yelchin (Chekov in the current "Star Trek" franchise), who becomes the band's de facto leader; Poots ("Need for Speed"), a tough cookie when the chips are down; Shawkat ("Arrested Development"), a voice of reason during the screaming; and Macon Blair — the star of Saulnier's breakout 2013 hit, the revenge thriller "Blue Ruin" — as the bar manager who finds himself in way over his head.
Writer-director Saulnier expertly handles the tension on both sides of the green-room door. He manages the chaos erupting among the bickering bandmates and the dispassionate violence — from gun, knife and pit bull — being plotted outside.
Often that violence erupts from the planned to the actual, with scenes of stomach-churning gore that are not to be taken lightly. "Green Room" will sometimes make you flinch, but it will never leave you uninterested.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
HHHhj
'Green Room'
Punks witness a murder, and try to survive in a neo-Nazi bar, in this pulse-quickening thriller.
Where • Area theaters.
When • Opens Friday, April 29.
Rating • R for strong brutal graphic violence, gory images, language and some drug content.
Running time • 95 minutes.