Ever wondered what happened to the biker-gang-member-turned-cop-cadet, Zed, from the Police Academy movies? Wonder no more. Bobcat Goldthwait has been working as a writer-director for several years and in God Bless America has now turned out a film thoroughly deserving of recognition.
Miserable and disillusioned with the shallowness of the modern world, Frank Murdoch (Joel Murray, brother of Bill and best known for his roles in Mad Men and Dharma and Greg) loses his job and is told he hasn’t long to live. Disgusted by the entitled, cruel and dishonest behaviour he sees all around him, Frank decides to see out the rest of his life feeding bullets to the more distasteful members of society.
No sooner has he begun, however, than he gathers a partner-in-crime in the person of 16 year-old Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr, here making her very creditable feature debut), an anti-establishment geek who would like to take out people who high-five and the cast of Glee.
God Bless America is, at its heart, a satire sprouting from the fertile soil of liberal wish-fulfilment. Pot-shots (both figurative and literal) are taken at thinly-disguised effigies of everyone from Simon Cowell to Glen Beck/Bill O’Reilly to Kim Kardashian to the Westboro Baptist Church, and the film’s climax takes place before the live studio audience of American Superstarz. If the reference isn’t abundantly clear, clock the neon logo behind the two protagonists:
It’s a moody film, however; the first act so depressing at times that one feels oneself sliding into Frank’s own despair at the culture of cruelty and selfishness that is bleeding into his own life (when his daughter begins to ape Paris Hilton, the desire to pull the blankets over one’s head becomes acute), although Frank’s attempts to vocalise what is so distasteful about modern culture are eloquent and heartfelt – and beautifully written.
Act two, signalled by the arrival of Roxy to stop Frank from committing suicide and instead turn the gun on those who “deserve to die”, is by far the best segment of the film – funny, touching, punchy and violent by turns, constantly complicated by Roxy’s attraction to Frank (“What, so we’re going to be platonic spree killers?”) and his growing affection for her.
Part three, sadly, fails to live up to the rest of the film, with Frank plunging once more into darkness, and relies mainly on a reprise of Andy the Gun Salesman from Taxi Driver/Samuel L Jackson from Jackie Brown for its yuks.
Perhaps its major fault is that God Bless America draws on several other, better films to drive home its ideas, as though Goldthwait didn’t trust his own writing to convey certain important themes and chose instead to let wholesale borrowing (not spoofing or slyly referencing) do it instead. Roxy and Frank very clearly mirror Mathilda and Leon from Luc Besson’s 1994 masterpiece, the Bonnie & Clyde/Natural Born Killers trope is clear (the platonism notwithstanding) and Taxi Driver, too, gets many a none-too-subtle nod. (Frank’s descent (or ascent, one could argue) shares a lot with the Michael Douglas vehicle Falling Down, but God Bless America does it better.)
Having said that, however, when God Bless America is good it is very, very good indeed, and when it’s less good it’s still better than a lot of the tosh out there. When Goldthwait trusts his own original work to speak for itself, it positively shines – and this director has a lot of very important, intelligent things to say.
God Bless America is out on DVD now.
