Imagine if David Mamet was some right wing conspiracy nut, and wrote a riff on the über-masculine, single-location thriller formula – à la Reservoir Dogs, and you might have an idea as to what it’s like watching The Standoff At Sparrow Creek. It’s the directorial debut of Henry Dunham, who also wrote the script, and it has a fairly simple setup – a group of militia men gather after a shooting at a police officer’s funeral, and it turns out one of the men in the group did it. They simply have to figure out who it is, and it’s up to Gannon (James Badge Dale), a former cop, to use his interrogation techniques to find out which one is the shooter.
While Reservoir Dogs seems like an appropriate comparison, it doesn’t fully paint the picture of what this film is. It’s nowhere near as shouty, or profane, or violent. It’s actually far more quiet, even to the point of being devoid of a score, using the silence of the warehouse and all the creaks and cracks that you’d hear in a place like that to fill the void in between the conversations. And boy, there is a lot of talking in this one, and thankfully, it’s a joy to see. There’s so much spark in the dialogue; lots of clever interplay, darkly comedic beats, and posturing one-liners. Every moment of revelation had me giddy with excitement as the tension also cranked up scene by scene. It’s an effortlessly watchable film, and it knows to keep things lean and mean.
And I do mean “mean.” This is not a movie about heroes, there are no good guys to be found. Despite the inciting incident being an off-screen shooting at a police officer’s funeral, the film doesn’t share much sympathy towards the boys in blue. Our central characters are also at their best – morally dubious, and at worst – deeply troubled. The film offers some empathy, but it merely acts like an observer as we witness these men slowly grow paranoid and lean on their most disturbing impulses, giving us fleeting glimpses at the way their minds work. It brings to mind the works of S. Craig Zahler, except far more subdued in approach in comparison, and oddly enough, one of the production companies behind this is also behind Zahler’s films.
The snappy dialogue and meaty character work allows for the actors, many of whom are generally character actors, to really sink into their roles and shine. James Dale Badge is a very compelling lead. Chris Mulkey is strong as the no-nonsense, de facto leader of this particular militia. Brian Geraghty plays a close friend of Gannon with a secret. Patrick Fischler is the unassuming teacher. Happy Anderson plays a rather aggressive member who used to be a part of the Aryan Brotherhood. Gene Jones plays the eldest of the group, who has a particularly dark past. And then there’s Robert Aramayo, who plays a detached, quiet guy; the youngest of the bunch.
Seeing Gannon navigate through certain scenarios with these other characters as they continue to have an ever-changing dynamic is a lot of fun to watch, and the film knows to keep its focus on that. The only misstep that I could nitpick is how the film would occasionally flash images from earlier in the film to emphasize certain reveals, which works for some moments, but lays it on a bit too thick on others. Aside from that, it’s made with an assured eye.
We’re still super early in 2019, so it’s kind of pointless to say that The Standoff At Sparrow Creek is “the best movie I’ve seen so far this year,” but it definitely is a strong piece of suspense filmmaking, and one hell of a directorial debut. I’m curious to see how Henry Dunham follows this up. It takes a formula that I’m sure we’re all plenty familiar with, and it offers its own distinct spin on it, delivering plenty of surprises, tense exchanges, and compelling psychological depth in its characters, while never feeling like its a too obvious riff on other films. Its imagery is often striking, sometimes dreamlike – or nightmarish, and the performances are stellar all around. Dunham manages to put you in the minds of the kind of people you probably wouldn’t want to associate with out in the real world, but he smartly uses their fears, anxieties, and ego to deliver some haunting drama and effective thrills.