THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK Review
Seven militiamen: Gannon (James Badge Dale), Ford (Chris Mulkey), Noah (Ben Geraghty), Keating (Robert Aramayo), Beckman (Patrick Fischler), Morris (Happy Anderson), and Hubbel (Gene Jones) all meet together in a desolate warehouse to discuss a crisis. One of their locked AR-15’s (among some grenades and body armor) is missing from their armory and on the radio they hear of an attack at a police funeral, where many officers have been killed or injured by an gunman who just so happened to be using an AR-15. To the seven men, the situation is obvious: one of them has committed an act of terrorism against the police, the question is just a matter of WHO did it.
This simple, if engaging set-up lays the foundation for director/writer Henry Dunham’s paranoid feature debut, THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK. Essentially THE THING with the role of Antarctic scientists replaced with gravelly doom preppers and the role of a shapeshifting alien morphed into a mysterious and elusive gunman, Dunham’s film is an engrossing portrayal of group dynamics under paranoid stress. As other similar attacks begin to pop up across the nation and with the threat of police retaliation and back-stabbing slowly encroaching on them, group leader Ford enlists Gannon, an ex-police officer, to interrogate each man on their last known whereabouts in sequences that are entirely expository in nature but filmed and performed with exquisite grit and verve. Indeed, each extremely flawed and troubled character is brought to life by all seven performers with Badge Dale leading the group in a performance that demands your attention. In Gannon, Badge Dale brings urgency and determination to his burnt out ex-cop, a man trapped in an investigation full of unreliable people with equally unreliable alibis.
In the midst of Gannon’s continued interrogations, Dunham flexes some seriously entertaining writing chops giving each character a chance to spit some hard-boiled dialogue at one another. Again, while most of the film spends its time letting its characters explain their tragic backstories, these heavily expository conversations work due in part to Dunham’s eye for visuals and pace in addition to each performer’s commitment to the role which heighten scenes that are otherwise just two men saying who they are and what they did. As a matter of fact, THE STANDOFF elevates past its simple set-up due in part to the way that Dunham and co. deliver an atmosphere of approaching dread and doom through the film’s eye-catching visuals, where Jackson Hunt’s dark and dreary cinematography vividly portrays the men’s stronghold as a vast and increasingly sterile environment waiting to crumble. Indeed, by the time the film sprints to its literal standoff, Dunham and co. shower their world in a beautiful violent parade of smoke, flashing lights, and loaded guns.
Overall, THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK is a lot of tough talk (quite literally) and if one isn’t in the mood for a talky, hard-boiled whodunnit, then you may be better off looking elsewhere. Even so, and despite a last minute reveal that threatens to add a dash of preposterousness to what is otherwise a grounded affair, Dunham and his tale of a bunch of morally grey militiamen in an even more morally grey world willing to do whatever to stop the bad guys makes for a devilishly entertaining first feature. What a way to pop up on the scene, Mr. Dunham.
4.5/5
