3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): God is a Bullet

2023, Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) -- download

Interesting. The last movie Cassavetes made before this was The Other Woman also starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau almost ten years ago. Hollywood's an interesting place in that despite having a few bit acting roles in a few movies, there is not much on the books that can account for his absence. What does someone do during a ten year absence? Usually the answer is "live life" but that can encompass a lot. A quick Google of "Nick Cassavetes Hollywood Reporter" shows that he has pretty much been working to get his next thing made at all times, so I guess a lot of that decade was spent having lunch on brightly lit patios with the purple suits.

That this was the product of those ten years, after the middling romcom (I won't say "that he is known for" for he does cover a wide range of styles in his career), is surprising. Its a hell of a slap-in-the-face movie about the most degenerate of America's underbelly.

Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Game of Thrones) finds his ex-wife and her new husband murdered, horribly, and his 15 year old daughter gone. He is a low-key policeman, not much more than a desk jockey, and his colleagues have very little to go on. That is, until he is approached by Case (an almost unrecognizable Maika Monroe, It Follows), an past victim of the cult that kidnapped his daughter. This ultra-violent group embraces the "left-hand path" of occultism, a mix of Satanism, anti-establishment ideology, anarchy and hedonistic violence. Their leader Cyrus (Karl Glusman, Devs) likes to kidnap teen girls and convert them to his world. Case eventually escaped but she has been haunted ever since, and offers to help Bob get his daughter back.

But first she has to bring Bob into their world. I am not quiet sure why as there is very little of an attempt to infiltrate the group, but she convinces Bob he has to be full-body & face tattooed, like she is. It might be more of right of passage for Bob, to leave his safe little world of "sheep" and enter her world of violence and debauchery. She may have left the cult, but she has been left a product of its indoctrination. Together, the newly tattooed, barely healed Bob follow the cult across the south US hoping to find them and, somehow, get the girl back. Case, and Cassavetes, never really reveal how that will happen, but I am thinking Case is just embracing the chaos and do whatever needs doing, when she and Bob get there.

The movie is upsetting, the world she drags Bob into is upsetting. Bob is a "good Christian" and has trouble reconciling his own world view with all that he sees, and especially with what he has to do, to keep him and Case safe until their goal is reached. We never know if Case is leading him for her own reasons, or to truly help. There is a lot of ideology conversation and accusation about being a "sheep" vs living in the world exactly how you choose, abandoning conventions. In the end, their goal is accomplished by embracing what the cult always did -- ultra-violence. They all have to die.