Some stupid violent assholes assault the legal marihuana farm of some stupid violent assholes. Betrayal and idiot ploys to make a cheap buck are of course involved too.
To me, films like Gerard Roxburgh’s Green Rush feel like the poor misguided children of neo noir, throwing themselves into various nihilist poses but never actually managing to tell stories that seem to come by their nihilism by anything but overplotting. This particular example of the form is convinced humans are just animals, donchaknow, so everyone and everything in it is absurdly horrible. Which might at least be fun to watch if not for the fact that every single character here is not just a murderous, violent asshole, but also so stupid I have my doubts anyone here can open a door without help. There’s an unspoken rule in movies that assholes are great fun (or at least interesting) as long as they are competent or better brilliant at what they do; and fools are best served with a good heart. Here, alas, is a movie full of characters that are neither likeable nor interesting whose stupidity makes them actively annoying. A handful of filmmakers on the level of the Coen Brothers can still make this sort of thing work, but that’s far beyond Green Rush.
Despite a more than decent cast (Mike Foy, Paul Telfer, Kriss Dozal et al are all doing their best with the material they are given) Green Rush falls into this particular trap of nihilism as a pretty damn annoying form of poser-dom particularly awkwardly, believing some particularly groan-inducing late movie plot developments prove its point when they only prove that overwriting and overplotting to badly make a point is much worse than any sin committed by a film made only to entertain.
It’s all particularly frustrating because technically, at least on the visual front, there’s a lot of talent on display, but these talent in dire need of either a better argued nihilism, empathy for its characters, or a more interesting philosophy.
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