An interesting first effort from Nichols -- making him a director to look out for in the future.
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04/11/08
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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
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
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.
04/04/08
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
Well-plotted, with a strong lead performance by Michael Shannon, and a fair amount of authentic regional flavor. It isn't really meant to be a treatise on Southern life. At heart, it's a country-fried genre film, minus the peppery white gravy.
04/03/08
[Star Michael Shannon is] one of the most formidable unsung actors working today in American movies.
04/02/08
Top CriticThough none of the boys, now young men, talks about it, they all bear burdens of rejection and rage.
03/31/08
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 CriticNever manages to be fully convincing.
03/28/08
Simple lives can have complicated histories, and Shotgun Stories has a hard, lived-in understanding of how the past is a monkey that's firmly attached to your back.
03/27/08
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
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
Shotgun Stories defines the classic western phrase 'doing what a man’s got to do' as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion.
03/26/08
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
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
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 CriticAlternately 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
Breathtaking and stands out from the herd.
02/29/08
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
... a simple human story with the archetypal power of Greek myth. It feels like an American classic.
12/14/07
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March 25, 2008:
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