Sovereign

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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From Christian Zwegal, “Sovereign” is a tense and sorrowful meditation on the 2010 police shootings in Arkansas in which two officers were killed by a 16-year-old from an antigovernment family. The film is somewhat objectivist and matter of fact in its detail but its characterizations are honest and heartfelt. It unfolds like a literary thriller from Dennis Lehane or a novella from Jim Harrison with hard-bitten echoes of “Winter’s Bone” (2010). 

Central to the film is the Sovereign citizen movement. According to my research the FBI defines the movement as “anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or ‘sovereign’ from the United States.”

This philosophy makes for a sad state of affairs and very real bloodshed.

Jerry Kane (Nick Offerman ) is a struggling roofer and single dad whose house is about to be foreclosed upon. He lives with his older teenaged son Joe (Jacob Tremblay) who is homeschooled.

Each week Joe is left to answer the door as bank officers attempt to serve his dad foreclosure papers which go unheeded. To Jerry, a man should be exempt from government and property taxes because the government is a faceless and abstract entity and not an individual.

Times are very difficult as it is, due to Kane‘s wife and daughter dying by sudden unforeseen illnesses. Kane conducts an Internet show each week to help others avoid government taxes and landlord gouging. Kane also conducts evangelical sermons focusing on the evils of the United States government, making hundreds of dollars in donations.

One day the noose tightens as the sheriff pushes his way inside the house. Father and son take a dangerous road.

This is actor Nick Offerman’s best role to date. He shows heart and spirit in his role as well as dark violence. It is not that Kane is a monster only that he is poisonously misguided.

The 1980s teen star Martha Plimpton is excellent as Kane’s struggling love interest. Plimpton’s acting carries echoes of the great Gena Rowlands.

The film has a terrible quality of predetermined unavoidability and suspense given the nature of the toxic opinions displayed. It is nearly pitch perfect in its honesty yet also sobering and quite melancholy. There are no winners or redemption to be found here.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com