Pulp Highway

Totally original ideas abound in "American Strays". This stylish black comedy where nothing is explained, has converging story lines. Among the bizarre desert travelers are a dysfunctional family, bickering mob figures, a vacuum salesman serial killer, and other quirky characters. The liberal quantities of violence are tempered by a fresh and unpredictable script. Incredible cast, incredible dialog, with above average character development. The beautiful desert locale photography adds immensely, and the soundtrack is memorable. I recommend going into this movie without reading any plot summaries, and simply coming along for the ride with these unforgettable characters. - MERK

I found a copy of this movie paired on the same DVD with the 1997 Gary Cole movie "Santa Fe". It was an apt pairing, because I found both movies to be extremely strange (though each was strange in its own original way.) Anyway, on to "American Strays"... As others here have pointed out, there is a strong Quentin Tarantino feeling to this movie, with its multiple stories and its quirky characters. Admittedly, with the movie jumping from one story to another every few minutes, the movie certainly never gets dull. But all the same, at the end the movie is somewhat unsatisfying. I think a big problem with the movie is that many of the characters are TOO quirky, coming across as live action cartoon characters instead of believable yet quirky people. Another problem is that while the movie tries to bring all the stories together at the end, there are two stories that don't really have a connection to the other stories that unfold during the movie. This movie really needed a few more rewrites before filming started. It's not an awful movie - as I said, it's not boring - but its unsatisfying edge will probably turn off a mass audience. In the end, the only people who will probably embrace the movie warts and all are those who are big fans of quirky low budget independent movies.

I think American Strays emerged when somebody got drunk in a film editing class and began splicing together outtakes. Bits and pieces from what could have been whole movies got thrown together to make one really disjointed piece of work.

That's all I can say about American Strays. In a sense it's a good title for the movie because it is about strays as the bits and pieces are put together like so much flotsam and jetsam salvaged from an ocean wreck.

A couple of the stories looked interesting like John Savage as the serial killer vacuum cleaner salesman, but in the end the whole thing is just a lot of mish-mash.

One of the characters in the movie points out the violence present in the Star Spangled Banner, claiming that it has fostered Americans to a life of violence. He says that it would have been much better if America the Beautiful would have been the US anthem.

Indeed, the lyrics of the song are filled of war rhetoric. Actually, the French equivalent, La Marseillaise, is just as brutal - at least. I guess that it goes for a number of anthems, since they often emerged from a nationalist crescendo, which is usually related to a war of some sort. All in all, nations as such have a history of war, closely linked to their formation. Hey, that's pretty true about civilization. It's a mystery how this species has survived.

Anyway, in American Strays, we follow a few fragments of human lives, and how they connect, purely by chance, leading to a grand finale in the spirit of said anthems. It's a sinister perspective on Americans, but also partly a beautiful one. Yes, there is beauty in the midst of gun smoke and brutality - fragile beauty, but isn't that the very nature of beauty? When strong, it loses its shine.

The film is refined in how it follows some human fates, at the point of their catharsis, and does so without judging, without staying at stereotypes. It is satire, certainly, but done with a heart and with intelligence - and curiosity, too. The characters have several dimensions, far from being simple caricatures, and what happens to them is foreseeable, but still not the most obvious way out.

Yes, I'm impressed by this little study of human nature. Although the persons depicted are odd creatures, in rare circumstances, something general is being stated about man, about society, about the very torment for each of us in trying to find fulfillment. And that's the same, whatever the nation or its anthem.

Strayed persons in a strayed movie. Six or seven scripts, each ten minutes long, rolled into one pointless movie with no direction or redeeming value whatsoever.

Well, maybe a few laughs here and there. But this has been done better, American Perfekt for example. The title says enough, I guess...