American Strays

If you're a fan of twisted plots, crazy characters, and movies that may not exactly make sense, you need to see this film. If you enjoyed Guy Richie's films (Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels; Snatch) with multiple plots running together, seemingly unrelated till the very end, you will probably also enjoy this movie.

Perhaps my favorite thing about American Strays are the Strays themselves - a cast of some of the most bizarre characters ever seen in cinema assembled in a way that just barely makes sense. I find myself really rooting for some characters and wishing death on others.

There is some bad acting in this film, and some choppy dialogue, and some pretty unbelievable plots, but that's part of this movie's charm. It's almost a terrible movie, I always think, "i can't believe i'm watching this (again!)," but when it's over, I am so glad I watched it.

This movie is a secret treasure. I don't know anyone who's seen it, other than people I make watch it. It's hard to find, most video rental places don't carry it, so you'll just have to buy it.

'American Strays' is part of the quirky road movie sub-genre in the vein of 'Highway 61', 'Motorama' and 'Roadside Prophets', only it isn't anywhere near as good as those overlooked efforts. A self-conscious, contrived gallery of eccentric characters derived from equal parts David Lynch, and the Coen brothers, with some sub-Tarantinoesque dialogue thrown in. This movie tries much too hard in some ways and not hard enough in others, making it way too uneven and self-indulgent to satisfy either a mainstream or cult audience. When it does have a decent idea (e.g. Luke Perry's failed suicidal slacker hiring 'The Exterminator' to do the job for him) it goes nowhere with it, and every potentially interesting bit is sabotaged by lame and silly schtick like Jon Savage's serial killer vacuum cleaner salesman. Just about the only reason to watch this is for one of the oddest and most eclectic casts assembled in recent years. They range from cult heroes like Luana Anders ('Dementia 13'), Sam Jones ('Flash Gordon) and the late Brion James ('Blade Runner'), dependable character actors like Joe Viterelli ('Heaven's Prisoners'), Jennifer Tilly ('Bound'), and James Russo ('Donnie Brasco'), coulda been contenders turned b-grade slummers Eric Roberts ('Runaway Train') and Jon Savage ('The Deer Hunter'), and left field picks like Luke Perry ('90210'), Melora Walters ('Magnolia') and Patrick Warburton ('Seinfeld's Puddy). Apart from the spot-the-actor aspect, there's not a whole lot to recommend this movie.

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.

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.

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.