National Anthem

Man, I wish I could get back my 1 hour and 40 minutes. I really wanted to like this movie, but it was a disappointing mess with bad writing choices and piss poor dialogues. While the film's intentions may have been noble, National Anthem ultimately fails to deliver a compelling or memorable story. The characters are so flat, they might as well be cardboard cutouts.

Totally, a missed opportunity I guess the director didn't have a clue to flesh out the story from the POV of Dylan (Charlie Plummer), who does his best in parts and completely out of place and probably not going to end well. Of course he is a good actor, but even his talent can't overcome the sheer awfulness of the script. The only redeeming quality is the chemistry between him and his brother. Those scenes are standout, with good staging, backed with decent score in an otherwise boring film.

In conclusion, "National Anthem" ahh wish i can say it's decent but I'll value your time well, it's just bad. I recommend skipping this one.

This is one of the best queer films I've seen. It encapsulates so much depth on what it means to be a queer person in rural America. The generous nods to gender roles and how their conformity is limiting to one's true self bled through beautifully. Dylan was a gentle hardworking young person just trying to figure it out. Maybe a lot of viewers can see your younger selves in Dylan, just a person trying to carve out our small place in this insane world whilst fighting to stay authentic to our true selves. Outside the queer lens, the scenery of the NM desert was breathtaking and the Americana imagery and motifs were consistent throughout the film bringing forth an interdisciplinary film combining elements of western and queerness together.

"Dylan" (Charlie Plummer) lives with his mum and younger brother and works, where he can, in construction to put food on the table. One day, he picks up some work with a travelling rodeo circus - loads of aspiring Buffalo Bills. The thing is, most of them are gay and aside from roping the ponies they put on some drag shows and have all the concomitant relationship issues that you'd expect to find amongst a community that is tightly night and highly strung. He is welcomed by all, and swiftly takes a shine to "Sky" (Eve Lindley) who is in an open relationship with "Pepe" (Rene Rosado) and for the rest of this film we follow that turbulent scenario set against more of his own family's discord and his own desires to save his cash to buy an SUV and travel the land. There is something really quite visceral about Plummer's efforts here and the grand expanse of scenery is really well captured by the photography, but the story. It's all just too safe. It's sort of like inserting a straight dynamic into "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", only this really does lack for much humour and is, especially towards the end, a rather earnest and plodding melodrama that I thought just ran out of steam. It's a story about love, lust and acceptance, but delivers nothing we haven't seen before across an whole range of cinema genres. Indeed, it's almost compartmentalised to ensure the main plot has virtually nothing at all to do with the film's USP. It had the potential to rock the boat a bit, but I was really quite disappointed, sorry.

There were things i liked and things i was like holy canolli what type of ranch is this? A movie for the instagram generation. But with the self absorbed free hippy love-in cult semantics, and a few other issues, I found this film hard to swallow. It was a snore-fest even with all the fabulosity and Rupaul's Dragnation it felt like a party where you look around and think I need to find the exit pronto. It's glacier pace lost me and the hyped up Group love-in i knew this was just messy bunch i would not want to roll with let alone give my time. A ranch of able bodied people living ther, and they need Mexican day workers while trans women walk around in flowing dresses doing Sweet FA. WTF? The stiff acting and laughing about a traumatic issue, making light of being kicked out of a family. This isn't a must see, not even a must stream. The soundtrack was nice. However, It's a big fat I DON'T THINK SO HONEY for me.

Charlie Plummer is one of the best American actors who's still largely "undiscovered." In LEAN ON PETE (2017), his quietly searing portrayal of a sensitive boy trying to lead a life of kindness in a cruel and grinding world helped to elevate that film to one of the twenty-first century's best. It's a movie that's not wholly different from NATIONAL ANTHEM, although gay director Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND, ALL OF US STRANGERS) took an asexual approach that left most of the queerness of Plummer's character as merely a subtextual potentiality. The potential parallels between the two films--combined with the fact that Plummer never disappoints in pictures as varied as SPONTANEOUS, KING JACK, ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, and more--left me excited to see this movie. Unfortunately, while National Anthem is not a bad movie, it never really achieves the spark of greatness. It left me largely bored and disappointed.

Director Luke Gilford, in his feature film debut, strives for a few different emotional tones but doesn't really nail any of them. There are sex scenes, but they're shot with the strange lighting and angles of some 1980s music video, and so they're not really sexy. There are romantic scenes, but despite strong performances from Plummer as Dylan and his love interest played by Eve Lindley, there's not much chemistry--their romance is more of a coincidental shrug than anything that conveys passion. There are scenes of romantic conflict driven by Rene Rosado, the third part of the love triangle, but the development of Rosado's character is cliche and nearly nonexistent. There aren't any clear stakes to the question of "will they or won't they," so the conflict is dramatically inert and its resolution unsatisfying. The film is ostensibly a showcase of queer joy in the hidden world of gay rodeos in the American West, but it never feels very joyful, inspiring, or uplifting because there is extremely little humor or spontaneity; instead of taking in this world through Dylan's perspective, we see it in the form of docudrama photojournalism--colorful characters smiling for the camera--which gives us a nice glimpse of an unfamiliar world but never really lets us feel like we're taking part in it. There are scenes of coming-of-age family drama that perhaps come closest to achieving their goal because of how well Plummer plays off the actors portraying his mother and little brother, but even that drama is pretty tired and unremarkable. There are memorable moments, but they don't cohere into any strong thread. On top of all that, there's a psychedelic drug scene that is inconsequential; scenes of work that don't seem like they're depicting real jobs; a tragic action climax that is random, forced, and predictable; and, of course, the titular performance of the national anthem, which fails to add any real thesis to the movie's narrative sloppiness.

I've written many negative things, yet the movie itself was ultimately fine if unremarkable, and I'm willing to round up with my star rating because its heart is ultimately in the right place. I'm sure many people, perhaps especially young queer people growing up in rural America, will see a lot to relate to and enjoy in this movie, and I'm grateful for that. Personally, however, I was just kinda bored.