Simon Rumley is no stranger to violence and obsession. One need only refer to his 2006 minor masterpiece, The Living and the Dead, to witness the depths of his understanding of the darker bits of the human condition. Venturing back into the same morally ambiguous and frightening regions he’s frequented before, Red White & Blue offers Rumley’s audience a harrowing glimpse into the lives of characters as conflicted as they are corrupted. The story is simple enough, a revenge tale akin to the better works of Sam Fuller, which follows the trajectory of some thoroughly damaged people in Austin, TX. What sets the film apart is the subtlety and efficacy it achieves in imparting the feelings of loss, regret, and, most especially, blind rage.
Erica (Amanda Fuller), a girl living at a boarding house in Austin, supplies the impetus for most of the dramatic tension in the film. A tragically damaged character, Erica is a nymphomaniac, whose only way of distracting herself from the pain of her irrevocably ruined life is by having tons and tons of unprotected sex with the strange men of Austin. The montage sequences detailing Erica’s complete debasement are refreshingly singular and confident, neither condemning nor congratulating her actions. It is pretty apparent that in no way is she taking the power back by seducing men who she is obviously not attracted to. Yet Rumley also avoids the temptation of making Erica out to be a completely helpless victim of her own feeble mind and lack of will, which would only serve to generate a false and ultimately worthless sympathy for her.
Watching the balancing act that the director pulls off with this character, and Ms. Fuller’s dedication to and collaboration with his vision, is a reminder of what is possible in small cinema. Without recourse to anything approaching an effects budget, Rumley and Fuller create the kind of intense, riveting character needed to carry a story that eventually delves into a realm of brutality verging on exploitation.
Ms. Fuller does an incredible job with her role, to be sure, but Noah Taylor, giving one of the best performances of his life, plays the most intriguing character in the film. Nate, a recently discharged Iraq War veteran with a murky and largely unexplored past, checks into the boarding house that Erica works in, and we quickly understand his capacity for creepiness and violence. The brutality of Nate, including his feverish joy at the expense of others, is effective because of its banality. Early in their relationship, Nate explains to Erica how much he used to enjoy torturing neighborhood pets as a kid and how he’s not really all that different these days. This seems like obvious foreshadowing because it is obvious foreshadowing — Rumley isn’t interested in a surprising twist, he leads us on a trip into the darkness of Nate’s character in a way that neither glorifies nor condemns his twisted sense of justice.
Drawing upon his own traumatic experience in caring for his dying mother while she battled cancer (much in the same way he did in The Living and the Dead), Rumley has created a haunting and violent meditation on what it means to be a deeply troubled and mortal human being. There are no easy answers in Red White & Blue; the terrible things that happen to its characters seem unjustified, and some of the images it contains are just as disturbing as anything you’re likely to see in any other work of cinematic fiction. However, the honesty of Rumley’s characters and the actors who play them are more than enough justification for the brutality of this small story.