God Bless America (2011)

I have a new hero. Joel Murray is not someone I’ve ever paid much attention to before, although looking back, he’s cropped up in a couple of things I’ve seen (Mad Men, Desperate Housewives) and he’s also in The Artist, which I have yet to bother to see. When Love Film finally gets around to sending it to me, I’ll look out for him – because he’s an impressive man. I’m reasonably sure his performance in this film borders on flawless and I was very pleasantly surprised to see such quality acting in a film that’s remained reasonably under the radar, for all its popularity.

In God Bless America Murray plays Frank – a tired, middle aged, divorced, recently fired, possibly terminally ill man with a growing hatred for the pile of celebrity gossip, prejudice, scare-mongering, and general crap that he believes America has become. Alone (again) one evening he retrieves his gun from a box on top of the bookshelf (why are they always in a box on top of a bookshelf?) and contemplates killing himself. Then he sees Chloe. Chloe is a rich, bratty, American teenager with her own reality TV show. With Frank, we see a quick flash of the programme – Chloe declaring boastfully that she rules her high school and screaming at her obnoxious parents for buying her the wrong car. After this, Frank rethinks his suicide plans. Why should he kill himself when there are so many better people to kill? Like Chloe for example.

Murray’s co-star in God Bless America, Tara Lynne Barr, is a new face for me. She’s been in a fair few things but usually single episodes of American TV series that I’ve never heard of. After a couple of shaky over-acted moments near the beginning, I really warmed to her in that comforting way of her reminding me of someone – but I can’t think who. She’s another person to keep an eye on in the future. Barr plays Roxy, a sixteen-year-old girl who meets Frank when he arrives at her school to kill the awful Chloe. Sympathising with his aims, she becomes his accomplis and they travel around America together imparting justice on those who ‘don’t deserve to live’.

There’s an extensive list of people in this category. I was doing well until they added ‘the givers and receivers of physical high-fives’. Well that’s me dead then.

For all their lack of care in their killings, they manage to get away with it for a ridiculously long time. You have to suspend your disbelief here for a while – I would like to think the police are a little more efficient than that at catching serial killers. It’s a detail I was quite happy to let go though for the sake of a better story.

While it doesn’t give you all that much to really think about or leave much of a lasting impression other than ‘well that was cool’, God Bless America might well end up on my list of classics – one of those that I’ll actually buy a physical copy of.