Americana Review: A Tribute Album Featuring B-Movie Classics

      Note: This review was initially published as part of our 2023 SXSW coverage. Americana will be released in theaters on August 15.

      Watching a talented band perform cover songs can sometimes be enjoyable. Tony Tost’s Americana embodies this concept: a tribute to the drive-in B-movie that has inspired filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, who in turn shaped a generation of auteurs creating quirky, violent ensemble pieces with non-linear narratives. What’s old becomes new again, and Americana, drawing from 1970s cinema, feels reminiscent of the 1990s, echoing films like Allison Anders’ Gas Food Lodging, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, and Kiefer Sutherland’s neo-noir Truth or Consequences, N.M. Thanks in part to a captivating cast, this film elevates the material beyond that of a typical local dad band performing Springsteen covers at a neighborhood bar on a Saturday night.

      Americana is structured in chapters. The first, titled “Old New West,” introduces us to Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman), a white boy raised near the local reservation who has become fascinated with Native American culture, idolizing Sitting Bull over colonizers. In a twist to be revealed later, his mother Mandy (Halsey) leaves her partner Dillon (Eric Dance) to return home.

      The second chapter presents the lonely rancher Lefty (Paul Walter Hauser) and a timid waitress, Penny Jo (Sydney Sweeney, channeling Sissy Spacek’s Holly from Terrence Malick’s Badlands). Lefty struggles in romance, repeatedly proposing to any woman willing to give him a second or third date with the same line: “I have a nice house, a strong back, and a heart full of love to give.”

      These quirky characters converge with Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex), the local sleazeball who recruits Dillon and his henchmen to steal a rare, valuable artifact—a Lakota Ghost Shirt—from a collector. Naturally, things spiral out of control when Lefty, who overhears the scheme in the local diner, begins plotting with Penny Jo, who is looking for her escape from the town. Coincidentally, she is an aspiring country singer aiming for Nashville.

      Complications arise when Cal and Mandy become entangled in Dillon’s operations, and Cal wanders off to the reservation, where he meets local gangster Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), who admits that he adopted his name partly due to his admiration for Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. While Americana doesn’t resemble the Scream films where characters are aware of the rules, a comparison is still valid.

      Writer-director Tony Tost is familiar with the dynamics and has assembled a strong cast, but the film falters in execution, resulting in a rather standard B-movie that fails to elevate its content in the way one might expect in 2023. Ghost Eye shows some agency as a hunter aiming to reclaim an artifact that belongs to his people, yet the portrayal lacks depth.

      Ultimately, the film's entertainment value is paramount. Studio executive Samuel Goldwyn would have likely resisted the temptation to make every project an “elevated” film tackling significant issues, famously stating, “Pictures were made to entertain. If you want to send a message, send a telegram.” The cast enhances the film beyond the realm of a late-night B-movie, as they embrace the archetypes of preceding neo-westerns (with Halsey sporting large 80s-style hair, fitting seamlessly alongside Isabella Rossellini in Lynch’s Wild at Heart). It’s unfortunate that the villains, despite Simon Rex’s casting, come across as rather simplistic, and that—regardless of any twists—everything resolves as anticipated.

      Americana debuted at SXSW 2023.