This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
The Town That Santa Scorned & Rudolph Rejected
Plot Overview
A white Christmas is looming over a
seasonally decorated town, with holiday music in the
air, but only birthday girl Alice (Dianna Agron) shows any
cheer … and a happy retard passing out invites.
Le Saint (Chris Briant) a partially disabled war vet is mooning over his wife who left him.
He's joined the local police force whose chief, Bernard (Terence
Knox) is not open to military-style suggestions but insists on
doing things the old ineffectual way. Two townies in
their forties, Oliver Shevibow (Tony Becker) and his pal Ronny
(Steven Waddington) fit Alice's description of their desperate
generation: They done made “all the wrong choices: a job you
don't really like, that doesn't really make you happy, getting
married to somebody you don't really love.” “I
don't,” says she, “want to live that way.”
Oliver is a computer repair techie whose company makes him work
Sundays for unappreciative clients. He stoically ignores his
wife and remarks, “Married life, my friend, it's not exactly
what they say it is.” He has a younger protege Stephen (Jay
Brown) who fancies himself a badass boxer-in-the-making.
This pugilist works as a harried waiter in a diner. Ronny for his
part is a school teacher who has to grade papers on Sunday, and he
prepares a class party. He spends interminable lunches in the
cafeteria with colleagues he can't stand. He is responsible for an
international student William Icham (Xavier Delambre) who
likes to play soldier. To escape their tedium, they hold weekend
war games in the abandoned Fort Goben on a private hunting
preserve. They pretend to be Vikings, but only a fifth, perverted
confederate rapes the conquered. They think along the lines of a
Sam Wasson historical novel: “having missed that semi-fabled
epic when men were men, women were women, and writers rogues,
… I increasingly feel—I suspect we all do—that
the history of life on earth is not one of evolution as much as
devolution. With each succeeding generation we get weaker and
smaller; the Titans are always in the past” (82).
The chief goes out of town and
assigns Le Saint the job of escorting mob witness
François (Laurent Barbier) safely to the courthouse.
When the pickup point is compromised, he selects a new one on
the fly: Fort Goben. There he finds more than he bargained for
(“I think they are man-hunters.”) Stephen looks at the
cornered guy and seeing his pale face & wasted frame, not
knowing it's from a year convalescence, he mistakes him for
their regular prey of pansies. He engages him—who
“could teach some of your [cops] a thing or
two”—in mano a mano combat that proceeds from kicks &
punches, to body slams, to grappling, to knife. If you'll
pardon my pun, it's a weekend warrior vs. a weakened warrior. The game players will write
it off as, “He died a good death. He died a warrior's death.”
Ideology
This coterie of throwback Vikings is reminiscent of, (Prov. 30:11-14) “There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness. There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up. There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.”
The whole town seems disrespectful to their parents. Only Alice is said to “mean a lot to your father.” Her dad organizes a birthday party with her friends. In the many scenes depicting the lead-up to Christmas, there are no family gatherings shown or attention given to the old folk.
The “Vikings” are “pure in their own eyes,” but they are perverts “not washed from their filthiness.” Several flashbacks depict their glorying in their demented deeds. They prey on the weak & poor who will not be missed.
“The Hunters” provides an illustration of author George F. Gilder's chapter on Ghetto “Liberation.” In it he states that, “even a relatively small proportion of unsocialized males can make life miserable for thousands of conventional citizens in a modern urban environment. The apparent swashbuckling hedonism of the male counterculture, moreover, exerts a strong appeal to almost every man. Thus unsocialized men can have a disruptive influence—as well as direct violent impact—far beyond their numbers” (113). The men need rewarding and fulfilling work enabling them to be providers, to achieve a responsible manhood that way rather than through a gang, sex & violence, and then to be good role models for and influences on their sons. This movie fits right in with Gilder's remedy for society.
Only Alice asks of their town, “Don't you ever want to leave?” She has implicit nurturing work in line with her feminine disposition. It doesn't surprise us to see her several months later in the Capitol, in a diner where nobody yells at the waiters.
Production Values
“” (2011) was directed by Chris Briant who also played lead. It was written by Michael Lehman. It stars Chris Briant, Steven Waddington, Tony Becker and Dianna Agron. Waddington and Becker give solid performances in their leading roles. Briant gives a solid performance as the main man. Agron was a standout beauty the town didn't deserve.
MPA rated it R for violence, language and some sexual content. This is a finely crafted movie whose only flaw is its fractured presentation of short scenes out of sequence, which the viewer must piece together himself. It doesn't help that the middle-age white guys all resemble each other in the dark, and then are randomly shown separate in the daytime doing whatever they do. The time-stamped, petite intertitles help, and so does a second viewing. Runtime is 1 hour 51 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The merging of crime and police drama with a Christmas season motif was a bold move, but then Christmas is what you make of it. Vikings never were the most welcome of visitors. For escapism this one leans towards realism. Should appeal to action buffs.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Gilder, George F. Sexual Suicide. New York: Quadrangle, 1973. Print.
Wasson, Sam. The Big Goodbye. Copyright © 2020 by Sam Wasson. New York: Flatiron Books, First edition 2020. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org