Mark Reviews Movies: AMERICAN SIEGE

American Siege, Vertical Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 6, 2022

The insular politics and corruption of a small town drive the thin story of American Siege. In it, a trio of criminals try to uncover a mystery by taking the local pharmacist hostage in his own home. One almost has to admire the barebones simplicity of writer/director Edward Drake's premise and the quaint outlook it represents. Obviously, there are bigger problems and more sinister groups in this world than these. There almost is something oddly comforting, though, in the idea that the guy behind the local medicine counter is the key to an entire web of crime, exploitation, and general terribleness.

In other words, this is a small movie, mostly set in and around a single house, isolated in the woods and next to a lake. The three anti-heroes, convinced they can uncover a conspiracy involving the disappearance of a young woman about a decade ago, take refuge in the house and have to deal with a series of increasing threats from the outside.

This could have worked, and with a better sense of tension and escalation on Drake's part, it might have. Instead, though, the screenplay seems so involved in the slow revelation and apparent importance of its own invented conspiracy that it forgoes every other element of its story. Its restricted focus on small-town malpractice makes the story feel a bit different, but everything else about the movie just makes it feel small.

The three hostage-takers are Roy (Rob Gough), who commits a federal crime immediately after being released from prison, and a pair of foster siblings named Grace (Anna Louise Morse) and Toby (Johann Urb). A third sibling, whom Roy briefly dated, disappeared without a trace ten years ago, and these three are convinced that John (Cullen G. Chambers), the retired pharmacist, knows what happened to her. The fact that he has an armed guard, whom Grace rather brutally beats and apathetically murders to get to John, certainly suggests the old man has something to protect.

Meanwhile, the town itself is kept under control by some local cops. Ben (Bruce Willis) is the Sheriff, barely caring about the job (like the actor playing him, which lends a brief period of credibility—until we notice the earpiece feeding Willis his awkwardly recited lines and realize the actor's boredom far surpasses his character's). He's looking forward to retiring and buying a boat. One of his deputies is Kyle (Trevor Gretzky), who leaves his pistol on the counter after buying some donuts, and the other is Marisa (Janet Jones), who spends her work day at a cabin drinking beer after beer. The intentionally comedic incompetence of these folks is kind of amusing at first, but it eventually clashes with the rest of the story's self-serious tone.

That tone comes from the all-powerful force behind the town's corruption: Charles Rutledge (Timothy V. Murphy), a crime boss involved in some awful dealings who pays off Ben to keep on the good side of the law. With John being held hostage, though, the FBI will be coming to town, and Charles can't evade them. He instructs Ben to put an end to the hostage situation before the feds arrive. In theory, all of this plays out in real time, which might be why the plotting comes across as a lot of wheel-spinning until the shootout of a climax.

The criminals in the house try to gain access to a vault, while the criminals outside dilly, dally, and otherwise delay some sort of confrontation for reasons that become increasingly unconvincing. The story inside the house (and, eventually, underneath it, in a facility that's suspiciously spacious and understaffed—as if the budget couldn't afford any extras) plays with undeserved severity, since the trio of characters are underdeveloped—without, in the ways they are developed, engendering much sympathy. Outside the house, with the cops remaining incompetent and Charles' murderous goons not behaving much better, the material is more like a comedy of errors than the establishment of any sort of legitimate threat. Ben gradually develops something akin to a conscience as he's ignored and belittled by his unofficial boss, and far too late, Willis tries something akin to acting in the third act.

Drake attempts to give American Siege a bit of a deeper purpose—about the evolving history of an illegal trade and the consequences of feeling trapped by one's place in the world. Like the movie's basic setup, that, too, might have worked, if only the filmmakers cared enough to put some degree of effort into it.

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