FrightFest Glasgow review – American Badger (2019)

My notes on American Badger (2019)

Writer-director-star-fight choreographer Kirk Caouette obviously puts himself out there with this vehicle – which follows You Were Never Really Here and Disorder in exploring PTSD as a super-lethal hit man who’s also a shell of a person bonds with a woman in need of protection … though it defaults plot-wise to much more hackneyed business about the killer who falls for his target, with by-the-numbers supporting characters like angelic sex worker Velvet (Andrea Stefancikova) and wicked gang boss Vasily (Michael Kopsa).  The title is weirdly inappropriate – it sounds like a cartoon or an indie about some middle-aged loser, though both tags are almost appropriate – but Caouette defuses objections with a funny aside (‘Wolverine was taken’) and then gets on with breaking arms, bashing heads, firing guns and otherwise mopping the floor with hordes of faceless, interchangeable baddies.  Again, it’s a well-worn approach, going back to Oldboy for a corridor fight (has any other sequence in recent cinema been so influential?) and tapping into some John Wick stylings.  It’s more of an issue that the storyline is so thin and the depiction of a protagonist who’s dead inside mostly involves many scenes of the Badger sitting in his small, dark flat brooding.  The hit man’s real ‘uncool’ name is Dean, though on what planet you have to be to share a name with James Dean, Dean Martin and Pearl and Dean not find that cool is a question left unanswered.

https://frightfest.co.uk/2021Glasgow/index.html