An austere rural landscape, festering hatred, class tensions, terse dialogue -- these are common currency in indie movies these days. Shotgun Stories uses them all, but manages to stand out from the crowd.
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04/04/08
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Shotgun Stories (2007)
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Reviews Counted:40
Fresh:37
Rotten:3
Average Rating:7.3/10
Consensus: Thanks to a talented cast and its uncommon depth, Nichols' debut manages to rise above its overly familiar plot.
Theatrical Release:Mar 26, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Son Hayes never speaks of the scars on his back. The shotgun pellets left under his skin make for a sporadic pattern of blue-black dots. The men he works with take bets on how he got them. His...
This stands true for the memory of his father, a man that never bothered to give his children proper names. He left the three brothers, Son, Boy and Kid, when they were young. Their last impressions were of a violent drunk who never hesitated to put his own needs ahead of his family. The brothers were left to be raised by their mother, a hateful woman, who to this day blames her children for the life she's been left with and the man she could not keep.
Their father, having left the memory of his children as completely as he left their home, managed to move on and put his life back together. He sobered up, became a devout Christian, married a wonderful woman, and fathered four new sons. All of who received proper names. His life became a model that most would aspire to, a man successful in business, community and family. His only true failing being the sons he turned his back on.
At the beginning of the film, we find Son, Boy and Kid as grown men. The three brothers' lives progress and their futures play out, but their past inevitably comes to claim them. Following a dispute at their father's funeral, a feud begins to simmer between these sons and the new young men their father has raised. It is an anger that has always rested uncomfortably in the background of their lives. However now, it is a thing that will rise up to overtake them all. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.
--© Official Site [More]Starring: Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs, Natalie Canerday
Director: Jeff Nichols
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Reviews for Shotgun Stories
Top CriticThis promising debut feature is remarkable for its use of inaction, the threats, standoffs, aborted shoving matches, but very little actual violence.
04/03/08
There's no escaping the fact that the film, well-crafted though it may be, is ultimately just as slow as the proverbial molasses.
03/26/08
An interesting first effort from Nichols -- making him a director to look out for in the future.
04/11/08
No question, it's a humorless downer, but also an impressive character study, with depth proportionate to the tragic nature of its theme.
04/09/08
This low-key yarn about lowbrow men isn’t for everyone. But whatever its faults and limitations, Shotgun Stories casts a spell unlike any other movie we’ve seen in ages.
06/20/08
I'm sick of the kind of exceptional that Shotgun Stories represents.
09/02/08
A precisely modulated yet cumulatively forceful story of a rural family feud turned deadly.
10/18/08
Top CriticFew films are so observant about how we relate with one another. Few are as sympathetic.
06/06/08
Top CriticShotgun Stories has a flawless cast, but it’s the peculiarity of Michael Shannon that keeps it from becoming too obvious.
03/24/08
Top CriticWriter/director Jeff Nichols is one to watch. He has fashioned a simple but powerful cautionary tale, equal parts Southern Gothic and Greek tragedy, and has given a familiar kind of material a fresh spin.
10/18/08
Like his fellow Mason-Dixon minimalist David Gordon Green (the film’s producer), [director] Nichols favors mood and ellipses over momentum and explanations, which gives this contemporary Hatfields-versus-McCoys narrative a beguiling, drifting atmosphere.
03/27/08
Though none of the boys, now young men, talks about it, they all bear burdens of rejection and rage.
03/31/08
The end reveals just how poetic, shifting and dazzling Nichols' touch was all along. That's because Shotgun Stories manages to pull away from a hair-trigger resolution with the same inherent right-ness that loaded the story with such tragic force.
07/10/08
There is much to "Shotgun Stories" that elevates it above the fray of Green derivatives and unflattering categorizations, bolstered by a roster of naturalistic, fully assimilated performances, led by "Bug"'s now ubiquitous Michael Shannon.
08/08/09
... here there's also an undercurrent of biblical revenge that lends the narrative a sense of violent menace and an almost continuous tension.
06/06/08
Top CriticIt's rare that a picture that deals with as much tragedy as this one also manages to convey as much warmth to its characters.
03/27/08
Alternately terse and elegiac, Shotgun Stories works best when it observes the lives of its main characters, three lower-class brothers from southeast Arkansas.
03/23/08
Tyro writer-director Jeff Nichols shows promise in his striking feature debut, a haunting saga about rage, revenge, and violence in one peculiar family, that does regional independent cinema proud.
03/26/08
Yes, it's a mite pretentious and on the slow side. But debuting director Jeff Nichols has an eye for small-town America and a sensibility that he shares with fellow North Carolina School of the Arts alumnus David Gordon Greene.
03/28/08
Top CriticLatest News for Shotgun Stories
March 25, 2008:
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