I considered seeing Green Room when it was in theaters, but the plot did not appeal to me. Do people really need a movie to tell them to stay away from neo Nazis or people with Confederate flags because they may be violent? (Side note: apparently people do.) After Anton Yelchin died, I decided to add it to my queue. If I had known that the director of Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier, directed Green Room, I would have seen it on the big screen, but I would have been wrong.
Green Room is not as textured as Blue Ruin. A touring relatively unknown punk rock bank needs money and gets a gig at a neo-Nazi bar. When they are finished with their set, they see something that they were not supposed to see, and it becomes a standard siege movie thriller. Warning: dogs are placed in dangerous situations as weapons.
Unless you’re John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13, Ghosts of Mars), you should probably ask yourself if you really should make a siege movie. Green Room implied too much and was underwritten. The best part of any siege movie, including Green Room, is when the victims turn the tables on the aggressors. Keep your eye on Reese, who was woke. The chicks kicked the most ass, and if life was fair, Imogen Poots would have gotten top billing ahead of Yelchin, but Yechin has the bigger name.
Patrick Stewart plays the villain in Green Room the way that Anthony Hopkins thought he did in Misconduct. Stewart is so soft-spoken and commanding that you want to trust him, but you shouldn’t. It was believable that a group of men would do whatever he said no matter how crazy it was if they were within range of his voice.
If Green Room has a real lesson, it is that when white people who are not racist tolerate white people who are, especially for financial gain, they are ignoring the fact that eventually that racism and dehumanization will transform into danger for them. Don’t vote Trump.