“Tommy Guns,” original title “Nação Valente” (2022), which translates to “Brave Nation,” referring to Portugal, starts in Angola during 1974, the final year of the Angolan War of Independence. The Portuguese Army is occupying the area. In one location, a young local Angolan woman, Tchissola (Ule Balde), perhaps a teenager, in traditional garb assists the lone missionary nun and crosses the path of a Portuguese soldier, Pedro, so wrapped up in his silent reverie that he seems untouched by anything going on around him, including the shooting of a fellow soldier on sentry duty near him. When their paths cross, their encounter will have a huge impact on many people across time and in distant locations.
Angolan born Portuguese Carlos Conceicao wrote and directed “Tommy Guns,” which has been marketed as anti-colonial horror, but is it? Conceicao’s aim is anti-colonial, but he still needs to understand the meaning of being a descendant of colonizers before he can effectively position himself against them.
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For a film to be anti-colonial, Conceicao should stop centering colonizer characters. In the first twenty-seven minutes, locals and colonizers share the screen time. The locals can be divided into two groups: indigenous people still following tradition and the revolutionaries who wear uniforms and brandish guns. Conceicao should be rooting for them. He sympathizes with the indigenous, but depicts revolutionaries as guys who get their kicks terrorizing nuns although he does take a beat to show that they are not planning to hurt her, however she does not know this, and her fear is genuine. It is impossible not to empathize with her.
“Tommy Guns” spends little time with the indigenous. The dialogue is sparse. Their story feels very National Geographic, which is not a compliment—Westernized guys got off at looking at indigenous women’s bare breasts, which are not covered or sexual in the original context. Also once Tchissola’s entire story arc is revealed, I had to cry bullshit. If Tchissola knew about the war and the Portuguese, who have a long history of committing atrocities on African people, she would probably hide as a caravan of soldiers passes and run, not start making out with Pedro when he appears. I appreciate that there is no rape, but still…..Her character exists just to establish that Pedro is a psycho. Also killing black people in a horror movie is not anti-colonial. It is the paradigm. Killing a woman for having sex in a horror movie is as establishment as it gets. If Conceicao wants to be anti-colonial, I would suggest that he watch “RRR” (2022) and Namor’s childhood scenes in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (2022). Anti-colonial films need to go to the next level after documenting and decrying colonialism.
“Tommy Guns” is surreal, but it is not horror. There are horror elements because there are zombies, but they are mostly black people rising to seek revenge. Before you get excited and start imagining a zombie horde ripping their murderers to shreds, which would be awesome and you cannot use my idea, stop. No, these zombies give head starts, observe COVID protocols and maintain a distance and still adhere to respectability politics and educate soldiers instead of being mad at them for murdering them. They have more in common with the ghosts in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” warning the colonizers to change their ways. Again, this is some bullshit. I know that zombies are supposed to be slow, but slow to anger too?!? If you want to argue that the soldiers are victims too, I agree, but I’m not the one marketing this film as a horror movie. Once again Conceicao centers the affect that colonialism has on the descendants of colonizers. Feel bad for them, not their victims.
“Tommy Guns” has been compared to M. Night Shyamalan, who is uneven and inconsistent—sometimes brilliant and other times disappointing. Conceicao remixed “The Village” (2004), y’all! After the first twenty-seven minutes, a Colonel (Gustavo Sumpta) commands his troop of seven men to hunt down one of their own (big surprise—he is black). They cannot leave until they have served their country, but it is unclear what that means. A huge wall surrounds them, including cutting off a river. A hole in the wall by the river allows bits of culture from the outside world to come through, including a huge painting of a woman’s face. The troop is less interested in girls or sex than remembering their mothers, but the Colonel misinterprets their interest in these objects for the prior and hires Apolonia (Anabela Moreira) to satisfy them. With a dash of “Dogtooth” (2009), introducing an outsider disrupts everything with the revelation that the Colonel is an older Pedro, who never stopped being psycho, continued the war in an isolated part of Lisbon during the present day and kidnapped boys to act as his soldiers. Yes, there is no logical way for the atmosphere behind the wall to be in Lisbon. The story is supposed to be a surreal allegory. I fucking hate allegories!
“Nação Valente” is a reference to Portugal’s national anthem. The heart of “Tommy Guns” is railing against the dehumanizing process that young men endure to serve their country, and how it perpetuates a cycle of madness. The kidnapped recruits accidentally break the cycle by killing the Colonel instead of Apolonia, who is the best part of the movie. If you want to get something done, seven big, strong, young men are not going to do it. Leave it to the sex worker. She will get shit done! In one evening, she fixes everything. 10 out of 10. No notes. She is the personification of “you only have to tell me once.” She was getting out of that place before the zombies gracious fifteen-minute head start ran out.
“Tommy Guns” is a gorgeous film. All the distant landscape shots are perfect, evocative, and memorable. My favorite interior shot is of a church with asymmetrically spaced windows of varying sizes and blocks of color. There is supposed to be a Virgin Mary theme with the pendant, mother memory, portraits, but it was inconsistent, so I did not meditate on the wider implications although again can’t ignore the virgin vs whore paradigm…eyeroll.
The zombie looks were a cross between the traditional George Romero hand bursting through a grave’s mound of dirt and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” There were some cool moments like a maggot crawling out of one zombie’s nose. If the indigenous cannot perform the appropriate rituals because of the colonizers, the dead will not rest in the ground. Unfortunately only one of the zombies has a thru line from life to death. The other zombies’ stories are nonexistent and serve more of a Greek chorus function. It was another missed opportunity. The zombies do gather flowers which evokes Ophelia, from “Hamlet” but some things got lost in translation as an American watching a film about two unfamiliar regions: Portugal and Angola. The meaning of these flowers eludes me.
“Tommy Guns” is better in theory than practice. Conceicao could be a promising filmmaker, but there is a lot of room for improvement. The twist and the moral only works if the story and characters are worth it. I understand that Conceicao mostly relates to the victimized Portuguese young men, but then leave the Black people out of it instead of forcing them to educate their oppressors even in death. I suppose that part is the most horrifying part. They’ll kill you and force you to explain to them why it was wrong.