Movie Review : The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (2018)
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The two most profitable movies of 2018 were Marvel’s Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War. They are certainly not terrible movies by any standard, but they’re not great either. Blockbuster movies are not designed to be great, they designed to be mildly pleasing to the largest amount of people and hoard moviegoing audiences. Marvel might not be the sole reason why I’m only hearing about The Standoff at Sparrow Creek now, but I’m sure it’s one of them.
But I’m telling you right now: it IS the best movie of 2018 along with Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark. We are collectively late to the show because we were busy looking elsewhere. It belongs in Criterion Collection.
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek tells the story of six Northern Michigan militia men who take shelter in a lumber warehouse after a police funeral is attacked by a lone gunman. The leader Ford (Chris Mulkey) and his lieutenant Gannon (James Badge Dale) quickly realize some battle gear is missing from their armory and that one of their own must’ve done it. Being an ex-cop and an interrogation genius, Gannon is tasked with finding out who did it.
Beyond Morality
One of the things that make The Standoff at Sparrow Creek such a unique and thought-provoking movie is that it uses tropes from different movies genres to create something new. Financial limitations probably motivated some of the creative ideas because the entire film is situated in one location, but writer and director Henry Dunham makes great use of that warehouse. He notably uses it to frame the cops as horror movie boogeymen, which is a crucial detail.
Crime movies usually draw a pretty clear line between good and evil. Whether it sides with the cops or the criminals, it tells you pretty clearly and loudly who to root for. It is not clear at all in this movie. Even the protagonist Gannon is being flagrantly duplicitous during the interrogations. I’m not going to spoil who, but he’s decides to protect one of the militia members without second thought. The only moral authority of this film is the audiences’ judgement.
Militia men would typically be cast as racists hicks in a crime movie, this is not the case in The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. They are isolated, frightened men who are terrified of the consequences one of their men’s action. This is almost all communicated through lighting and staging. You never see cops until the very end. You heard sound, see shadows in the raw, industrial lighting and most important, you feel the fear of people who never fit into the system.
That movie probably cost peanuts to make, but lighting, ingenuity and good ol’ fear of the unknown were all it required to create something special.
Angry white men arguing in a warehouse
There’s a lot of palpable influences in that movie. Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men is one. Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped is another obvious one. Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The backbone of this movie is angry white men arguing with one another for reasons that gradually emerge, which I have to admit is my favorite kind of movie in the world. Without ever ripping any of his influences off, Henry Dunham turns them into something new.
A movie like The Standoff at Sparrow Creek makes you realize how little you need in order to create a memorable movie. I mean, there is violence in there. It is mostly implied, though. There’s no intricate fist fights, no gruesome torture. Little to no gore. It’s built out of psychological tricks, powerful dialogue and flat out good writing. I don’t know about you, but give me a good story any day over a needlessly violent or gory story.
If it works, it don’t need to squirt.
Tension is the key to a great story. It doesn’t necessarily need to be clever, but The Standoff at Sparrow Creek has different layers of tension that unravel in its jam packed 89 minutes runtime. A local militia weeding out a loose cannon is a pretty self-explanatory conflict to resolve, but while Gannon leads his investigation he unravels other secrets that lead them where they are. This movie is anything but straightforward. It’s very nimble and clever.
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The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is a movie that I would’ve bought on DVD and watched over and over again had it came out ten years ago. I’ve just watched it and I’m still convinced that I’m going to watch over ten times in my life. It’s that kind of movie. It’s different. It’s raw. Bleak. Spare. It hits all the right notes without trying too hard. It’s a shame that Henry Dunham hasn’t been heard of since, because he’s one of the most exciting young talents in the game.
