American Riot

Surprising watchable. Obviously some people are going to take offense and feel attacked, triggered maybe, but it's not that bad.

The plot doesn't seem that far fetched of a reality. The right wing fascist beliefs and brainwashing in the world today could lead us somewhere like this. Xenophobia is strong in the US and a lot of other places.

The acting also isn't the best but Michael Raymond-James did a decent job. It does seem like more editing could have made this a little better. Maybe cut the length down about 20 min or so. Nadine Malouf very good as well.

January 6th is a good example of what might be coming.

6/10.

A good premise. Timely and terrifying. Too bad they couldn't follow thru with a plausible script. Why in the world would people who want a White, Straight, christian America prevent those who are not from leaving the country?? Major plot holes, lousy character development, tedious dialogue. I couldn't wait for it to end.

While there are a couple of adequate aspects to the film, such as the reasonable lighting, basically competent camera work, it's a fundamentally difficult to watch movie, both in terms of the story telling which is laboured, and quite frankly the premise of the film, as pointed out in many of the negative reviews here.

The characters are unlikeable, while at the same time being one-dimensional, existing only to serve as an unsubtle representation of what the writers feel are positive characteristics - which can be summarised as being of non-European ancestry, muslim, homosexual, or politically left wing.

The counterpoint to this is a depiction of those who do not share those characteristics as being evil, to the point of being comical. Think a depiction of Germans in a 1950s movie about World War 2, in terms of subtlety.

Dialogue is uninspiring. And often unpleasant, with scene after scene of foul-mouthed diatribes by primary characters, who seek to project those ideas onto the chosen bad guys - while actually demonstrating their own internalised hatred of 'others' outside their group.

And this is where the film becomes more of a political lecture, instructing the audience that there are good people, and then there are bad people - who are white, heterosexual, and Christian. With such heavy-handedness the film manages to score an own-goal, by being the intolerance it allegedly aimed to reject.

How you treat this film will depend on your political viewpoint, for example if you are left wing, then this will serve to reinforce your world view that white, straight men are evil. If you are politically right wing, you will shake your head at the misrepresentation of reality. Everyone in between will simply switch off after 15 minutes.

I want to explain in this review why some white conservatives feel the way we do about the movie. For starters, in order to like this movie I think you have to already be on board with a sizable share of liberal dogma. If you aren't, then obviously seeing the narratives ratcheted up to 11 in the most implausible way isn't going to resonate with you. For conservative white people the premise of the movie comes across as a bit of an attack and I'll tell you why. If you're at all concerned about demographic replacement for example, or even just happen to notice the amount of anti-White rhetoric put out daily by the media, it's infuriating to see a movie that the left unironically believes to show a possible and not-so-distant future. The protagonists are of course stand-ins for their real world counterparts who without a shred of self-awareness claim they are opposing fascism while attacking people and forcing them to comply with their world view, often with help from the state. Talk about an inversion of reality. The fact that the majority White population is shrinking (often to sounds of applause), that it's trendy to hate White people, and that racism towards Whites is claimed to be impossible meanwhile the entire establishment openly embraces it are all things that greatly contribute to the hate this movie gets. If you're on the left you're probably shaking your head right now but I would wager that those of you who are likely haven't been exposed to much outside of your ideological bubble. I don't mean that in a spiteful way either. Consider this: most of the mainstream and establishment media leans left, most of the entertainment industry leans left, and most of the prominent figures in Big Tech lean left. Both the left and the right are exposed to these narratives by nature of their availability and constant promotion, but only one side is bombarded with things they disagree with. Liberals don't really get that opportunity unless they actively seek out opposing views, and why would they when those same information channels will gladly tell them what the other side is like? Would you trust an entirely right-wing dominated establishment to accurately and fairly portray your views? Probably not. So that's the political reason a lot of us don't like the movie.

There are many things to dislike about the writing and overall plot as well. It seemed like the main focus of the movie should have been on the barn and not the various personal dramas between the protagonists, because the entire premise was that the person they had imprisoned held bad views and should change. Not nearly enough time was spent exploring the belief system of Gabe and his "transformation" happened way too quickly to feel authentic. This is where it falls apart for the movie because I feel like the writers wanted to misrepresent the views of their political opposition in real life by constructing a character that only half-explains their beliefs, poorly, and then just gives up on them after a little prodding as if they were never really sincere. Of course we're not going to see Gabe's points fully fleshed out or given proper context due to time constraints or other reasons, however many of the things they made Gabe say are a combination of genuine concerns and convenient "icky" pretexts that seem aimed at disqualifying them from consideration. Here's a textbook example of the conflation I'm talking about: "Allowing you to exist is a threat to the white race". That line appears tailor made to discredit what Gabe said seconds before, which was "people like you, they're actively replacing my entire race. That's just a fact". It's meant to make people who point out that White countries are the only ones being encouraged to replace or reduce their majority populations seem hateful. It is highly insulting to be portrayed like that, as if "allowing non-whites to exist is a problem" is the argument actually being made.

On the social and cultural side most of us are simply fed up with having LGBT and diversity quotas being priority number one in the media and everything else. They felt compelled with this movie to tick all the boxes and did so in such a way that it felt *extremely* forced. We should be able to criticize the overreliance on "representation as a selling point" without being called names for it. That needs to stop. The movie could have been greatly improved if even one or two things were toned down and I promise you that most people, left and right alike, are tired of it all. Only the far-left and the far-right are obsessed with these things; everyone else just wants entertaining movies. While there are other things that contributed to the hate surrounding this movie, the issues I've illustrated are a good enough starting point for anyone acting in good faith to understand. We're not just piling on for fun because it was made by the left, we're telling you precisely what angers us and to paraphrase Douglas Murray, we're done trying to convince you to be civil. If you want to pretend we're saying something we're not then that is entirely on you.

If there was a negative value available to rate this movie, I would give it less than 0. The premise of this movie is so absurd that it deserves to be thrown immediately in a dustbin of history.