Entertaining enough, often original, but also fundamental flaws.

Rating: 6/10 (22 November 2018)

The film opens cleverly both visually and narratively and we are quickly drawn into the current lives of Pat, Reese, Sam, Tiger, and Tad a band of earnest, starving punk performers. Through a series of mishaps they soon find themselves deep in the Northwest woods at a neo-Nazi rock club. And just before they can slip away, they witness a murder and are detained by management awaiting the boss Darcy. That's Patrick Stewart, who I thought did a pretty good Nazi. i'm horrible with faces while my son is quite aware, yet both of us kept thinking Walter White rather than Captain Picard. Which brings me to a point that I think a lot of viewers completely missed. Not surprising since it's mentioned off hand once or twice and never figures in the action for some reason. But it does go a LONG way to explain why Darcy is so intent on constructing a death scene somewhere else. And that is the flaw of the movie. It is so concerned with immersion in the moment - which it does very well - it ignores the basic rules of exposition. I have no idea which one is Pat, Reese, Sam, Tiger, or Tad and I couldn't even tell you which ones lived or died except that I looked it up. And while the 3-4 forays from the green room generally resulting in a furious retreat might be an ironic twist on the conventions, the geography of the place is equally hazy. There is a secret level, which holds and keeps Darcy's secret, and well maybe it's just another ironic dead end. But when the band finds the usual unexpected allie who knows the exits, they still wind up behind the bar for some reason. There is, of course, a cathartic conclusion, but even that leaves the worm unturned. For me, the main measure of a movie is whether it draws me in by avoiding obvious manipulations, clunkly tone, or pacing. And this did and was often clever and original. But it could have been a whole lot better if used some more of the old tricks to make us care about what was happening rather than just watching it unfold. So a six.