[Star Michael Shannon is] one of the most formidable unsung actors working today in American movies.
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04/02/08
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Shotgun Stories (2007)
93
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Tomatometer
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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 CriticIt's clearly a labor of love and no doubt true to some regional ways and attitudes. But jeez, it's self-parodic, and all the more so for taking place in some uncharted corner of Dixie where nobody has the slightest sense of humor.
04/25/08
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
Never manages to be fully convincing.
03/28/08
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10/18/08
Jeff Nichols modern Western is laconic and lazily captivating, its silence slowly building to rage.
05/15/08
The credentials of many festival screenings might suggest to alert viewers that this isn't a shoot 'em up between two hill billy clans
12/04/08
An allegory of our times, Shotgun Stories is a tragedy of biblical scale and an intimate family drama.
05/08/08
Writer/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
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
Though none of the boys, now young men, talks about it, they all bear burdens of rejection and rage.
03/31/08
Shotgun Stories has a flawless cast, but it’s the peculiarity of Michael Shannon that keeps it from becoming too obvious.
03/24/08
Top CriticLike 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
Good natural performances.
02/16/09
A precisely modulated yet cumulatively forceful story of a rural family feud turned deadly.
10/18/08
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
It'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
Shotgun Stories is, at heart, a film about people who discover what they have to let go of, and who confront the terrifying possibility of hope.
02/23/08
The real key to the film is the commanding Michael Shannon.
08/05/08
This promising debut feature is remarkable for its use of inaction, the threats, standoffs, aborted shoving matches, but very little actual violence.
04/03/08
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March 25, 2008:
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