LeonLouisRicci This is One of Those Low-Budget Movies that is Confined, Mostly, to a Couple of Small Rooms and the Director has the Characters Cry, Sob, and Bawl A Lot to Add Some Movement and Emotion to the Restrained Sets.This is Basically All Over Emoted with Much Shouting, Except for Danny Glover Who Whispers and Mumbles for Contrast. The Conflict Between the Neo-Nazi Couple and the African-American "Family" Consists of Guns to the Face, and Waterworks.Nothing Much Happens and a Few Flashbacks Relieve the Claustrophobic Atmosphere Once in Awhile and that Helps, but Ultimately the Film Goes Nowhere and Strains for Some Insight that is Rarely Attained. Joe Anderson Does OK but the Constant Gun Barrell He Thrusts in the Faces of the Hostages Gets Boring and Redundantly Silly After a While. Dawn Oliveri as the White Supremacy "Groupie" as She is Described Waivers Wildly and Fluctuates Between Psychotic and Motherly. None of this is Satisfying Trying to Deliver Messages About the Psychology of Hate Groups or the Bonding of Family in a Crisis that it Tries So Desperately to Convey. It is Done in an Overwrought Fashion and the Script is None too Smart About Any of It.

Tom Dooley Based on actual events (so a bit of licence has deffo been taken) this is about Garrett Tully (Joe Anderson) who has just done a fifteen year stretch for armed robbery. He is the sort of guy who has a modicum of intelligence all designed to back up his racist philosophy and more tattoos than a Colombian drugs cartel. He is also one of the White Supremacists and the brotherhood or what ever they want to call themselves, arrange for some cheap trailer park trash to pick him up on his release. This is Doreen played very convincingly by Dawn Olivieri ('American Hustle').Then things go South very quickly when Tully guns down a cop. They then high tail it to a local house where an extended African American family live and they take them hostage.Danny Glover plays the man of the hostage house here and he does so with a gravitas and vulnerability that actually raises this film up a level or two. It is an indie effort but does not suffer from that. Some of the police procedures are a bit questionable, but as ever are done for dramatic effect rather than accuracy. It has an air of menace and panic and for all its minor flaws remains a strong film with some very credit worthy performances and the direction is to be commended too. Not action packed either; much more psychological so if that is your thing then this will be one you may want to watch.

timlin-4 While the characters are well developed, this movie's attempts at creating drama or delivering a message fail. Anderson energetically plays his character like Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, Glover whispers powerfully like Don Corleone, and Olivieri has the most interesting performance that resembles one of Toni Collette's neurotic characters. But the actions of the characters don't really make any sense, they are crudely forced into the story, unnaturally animated like puppets. Even more unforgivable, the movie skips ahead some minutes past a key scene so that it can be revealed later through a flashback. This is so infuriating I had to adjust my rating even lower as I wrote this. And of course the ending was not any better, some intensity is conveyed, but it's contrived and basically silly.

kosmasp As a thriller this works nicely, mostly because of the performances. The characters and the setting is pretty simple. As is the mindset of certain individuals in this. Danny Glover showing is once again, that contrary to what one of his characters says, he's not getting too old for this. Good performance to counter the other lead performance. Racism and violence meets with dignity and calmness.In the most crazy situation, where everything seems to fall apart, it's tough to stay cool and not be affected by this. The movie is obviously a morality tale, not only about crime (and that you're alone in it, even when it seems like you have an ally), but the stark contrast between hate and love. Real family and made up family too ...