Mark Reviews Movies: AMERICAN SAUSAGE STANDOFF

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 26, 2021

The plot of American Sausage Standoff feels like the premise of a joke—or a series of jokes, considering how many threads and characters exist in this story—without any punch line. Writer/director Ulrich Thomsen has populated his small-town satire with plenty of eccentric personalities and loaded political ideas, but the general weirdness, combined with a lot of broad digs at nationalism and religious hypocrisy, seems to be the movie's only purpose and point.

The central thread involves the escalating tension between Edward Hofler, a German immigrant who's played by the Scottish Ewen Bremner, and life-long Gutterbee resident Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. (W. Earl Brown). Edward has a passion for sausage and a dream, carried on from his late parents, to open a restaurant.

Jimmy has watched as residents have abandoned this small town, and he's convinced immigrants, especially those from China, are to blame. While preparing for a cabaret at the local dance hall, the overt racist and nationalist also hunts for and tortures any immigrants who aren't of European descent, in order to scare them out of town.

Edward gets some help from the recently incarcerated Mike (Antony Starr), who was one of Jimmy's goons but wants out of the business. He and the German work to turn an old church into a restaurant, while Jimmy and traveling preacher Luke (Clark Middleton) plan to sabotage the effort. Meanwhile, the new Sheriff (played by Chance Kelly), who almost develops a fetish Edward's sausages, narrates the tale with empty observations and meaningless maxims.

In satirizing American politics, the Danish filmmaker displays a basic comprehension of the darker matters (Jimmy is a walking, talking caricature of a racist, a homophobe, a religious zealot, and a not-too-hidden white supremacist), and that's about it. The conflict between Edward and Jimmy turns from insults, to threats, to violence, to an uneasy alliance, and, finally, to something that means nothing to the plot, as Luke sees the restaurant as a threat to his income and Jimmy's son Hank (Joshua Harto) decides he's had enough of his father's dismissal of him.

All of this is increasingly odd in a way that's both odd and estranging. That oddness seems to be the real joke of American Sausage Standoff, but instead of offering any insight into or actual critique of these characters, Thomsen rests on letting the oddity be the only joke.

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