A new street drug called “Hype” has turned ordinary citizens into crazed junkies, and a once thriving city is now in squalor thanks to the rampant trafficking of the illicit substance. A few old-timers are able to get away from the troubles of the decaying city at their local V.F.W. where they sit around drinking beer and swapping war stories. When a young girl (Sierra McCormick) is chased into the bar by a bunch of drug-crazed loonies, the tight-knit group of veterans led by the bartender Fred (Stephen Lang) fight off the junkies, leading to several members on both sides being killed or wounded. One of the dead happens to be the brother of the local drug kingpin (Travis Hammer) who declares open season on the veterans, causing hundreds of “Hypers” to converge on the V.F.W.
VFW is a love letter to John Carpenter, specifically Assault on Precinct 13. Everything from the set-up, to the camerawork, to the music features his distinct cinematic DNA, and you can tell director Joe (Bliss) Begos is having fun walking in the Master’s shoes. (Begos’ first film, Almost Human owed a lot to Carpenter’s The Thing too.) There’s also a bit of a Walter Hill vibe as co-stars William Sadler and David Patrick Kelly frequently worked with Hill.
It’s also a love letter to the great character actors that populate the cast. These guys have been the backbone of some of your favorite movies from the past forty years, usually in support of other, bigger name stars, and it’s nice to see them all getting their moments to shine. I’m a fan of all these guys (including Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, and George Wendt), so just seeing them all under one roof was a lot of the fun for me.
The expeditious set-up is appreciated too. So is the film’s lean and mean three-chords attitude. There’s no real fat on the movie to speak of. The actors are all able to string together nice little moments throughout the siege. Things move so fast that we learn more about the characters through their actions in battle, and their interactions with one another. This works much better than listening to gobs of exposition (although there is some of that).
The great cast may be the main draw, but the big drawback is the lighting in the bar, which is so dingy that it makes some of the carnage hard to see. I don’t know if this was a stylistic choice or if it was purposefully done to obscure some of the more gruesome moments to secure an R rating (which it did not receive). Whatever the reason, it’s quite annoying at times. Still, I have to give the movie bonus points for having a character say, “Hindsight is 20/20”, which is important when you’re writing a column called Hindsight is 2020.
Despite the shitty lighting, VFW offers the viewer some choice gory bits. Begos is the kind of guy who says, “Why should we just use one squib when a guy is shot? Why can’t we just explode him from the waist up and call it a day?” It’s that kind of enthusiasm that endears a director to me. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
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