Michael Shannon plays the oldest of three siblings, all of whom were abandoned in boyhood by an alcoholic father and raised by a ‘hate-filled-mother’. The clan’s dysfunction is writ large in the barely considered names; “Son,” “Kid,” and “Boy”, while their domestic arrangements cry out for Dr. Phil.
As the film opens, Son’s wife has walked out on him, promising not to return until he quits gambling. His insistence that it’s not gambling when you have a system suggests Mrs. Son will need more than tough love. Her absence allows ‘Kid’ (Jacobs) to move in from his pup tent on the lawn and ‘Boy’ (Ligon) to park the van he calls home out front, where, with true white trash élan, he can mix margaritas in a blender hooked up to a car battery.
This close, beleaguered unit is thrown when their father dies, an event that inspires a graveside stand off with the family he left them to raise. Bloodshed soon follows.
The first time filmmaker seems to have been paying due attention to the work of David Gordon Green (George Washington, All The Pretty Girls) who, aptly enough, presided over this project as producer. For all the cotton fields, back roads and exquisite downhome detail, Shotgun Stories owes more to Shakespeare than rednexploitation.
Revealing its scope through paradoxically succinct vignettes, neo-realist grain and minimal dialogue, the drama simultaneously recalls such all American masterworks as Old Joy, Huckleberry Finn, No Country For Old Men and The Jerry Springer Show.
Michael Shannon, assuming the central role, towers over the picture with the same fierce intensity he brought to the sadly overlooked Bug. He deserves better.