Tag: tragic

SOVEREIGN – Review

(l-r) Jacob Tremblay as Joe Kane and Nick Offerman as his dad Jerry Kane, in SOVEREIGN. Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment

It is not kings but citizens as sovereign, as Nick Offerman stars as a father of a teen-aged son, played by Jacob Tremblay, in the true story-based thriller in SOVEREIGN, about these followers of the extremist, anti-government Sovereign Citizen belief system. The film also features Dennis Quaid, who plays a police detective, also a father but of a grown son who is training to become a policeman, who the father and son extremists encounter. This tale of two fathers is tense, moving and heartbreaking, as their world views come into conflict.

A little research uncovers that “Sovereign Citizen” is an actual far-right, anti-government world view, based on pseudo-legal beliefs derived from their interpretation of parts of the U.S. Constitution, a version of the Magna Carta and British common law. Those interpretations lead them to conclude that if they reject citizenship of a state or country, they can act as individual “sovereign” entities not constrained by normal laws, such as a requirement to have a driver’s license, and other rules of society.

The film itself gives scant few details on the extremist Sovereign Citizen belief system underlying these tragic events, leaving the film’s audience wondering and unclear on much of it, and in fact, doesn’t even use the term “sovereign citizen.”

Still, SOVEREIGN is very well-acted, well-made and a tense film that blends family drama and crime thriller elements in which things spiral down when opposing belief clash, but it is a film that can be grim and hard to watch. It was directed and written by Christian Swegal, based on a 2010 West Memphis, Arkansas, incident involving a father-son pair who adhered to far-right Sovereign Citizen ideas. In the film, ultimately, your heart breaks for this teenager, a good son to a misguided parent.

Nick Offerman is excellent in this film, and the same can be said for Jacob Tremblay as his dutiful son, in this tragic, true story-based drama/thriller. Jerry Kane (Offerman) is a single parent raising his son Joe (Tremblay) according to these extremist beliefs. Jerry makes a living by traveling around the country giving seminars on legal matters, like ways to avoid foreclosure, by following steps derived from Sovereign Citizen beliefs. Ironically, while Jerry is advising people on legal matters, particularly on real estate, he and his son are facing foreclosure on their rundown, modest ranch home.

What little the film shares with audiences on these extremist views in delivered when Nick Offerman’s character, Jerry Kane, talks about those concepts as he lectures his audiences, in his “legal” seminars and on a podcast where he is a regular guest, both with audiences already familiar with Sovereign Citizen beliefs. The film’s audiences would have benefited from a little more basic details, maybe with some text at the film’s start, explaining what Sovereign Citizen is. We do not get an exposition scene from the authorities (mostly police or the courts) in the film, because the authorities Jerry Kane encounters are as unaware of Sovereign Citizen as most of the film’s audience likely is.

While his father is traveling for his work, the home-schooled Joe Kane is left at home, so he is there alone, when a representative of the bank comes by to serve notice that foreclosure is looming. Joe accepts the official papers, and when the policeman with the bank representative tells Joe he has to clean up the house and property and maintain it so it can be sold, Joe dutifully does that.

Returning home, Jerry is irritated that Joe accepted the legal documents, but not unduly so. He has a solution, which is to go out on a speaking tour, collecting donations at each seminar. Usually Jerry leaves the teen home alone when he hits the road but this time he takes his son along to help, and his son’s dog too. Joe is thrilled to tag along with his dad, and is hopeful that they will raise enough money to make a payment on the mortgage and get to keep their home.

The father and son encounter Dennis Quaid’s police detective after a traffic stop, when dad Jerry is taken into custody for driving without a license and insisting on his pseudo-legal belief that his does not need one because he is “traveling” rather than engaged in commerce. While Jerry sorts out his issues with the law, teenager Joe is place in a juvenile group home and encounters kindly social workers that give him a glimpse of a different world. While still wanting to stay loyal to his father, the home-schooled Joe starts to dream of going to high school and of a different future for himself.

In many ways, Offerman’s Jerry is a good father, supportive of and encouraging to his son, although his extremist worldview blinds him to what might be best for his son Joe. Joe is a good kid, a dutiful son who loves his father, but is less certain about the Sovereign Citizen beliefs.

The film is also a kind of tale of two fathers, as Quaid’s character is also a dad, although of a grown son, Adam (Thomas Mann), who is training to be a police officer. While Offerman’s Jerry is warm and encouraging to his son, Quaid’s character is more inclined to criticism, even critiquing his grown son’s parenting skills with his own infant son. Both Quaid’s and Offerman’s characters have their strong beliefs about the world, one conventional and the other extremist, and both have loving sons who are eager to please them. But the fathers diverge in their interpersonal styles with those sons, just as they do in their worldviews, although not in the ways you might assume.

As events unfold with the bank and Jerry Kane’s belief system clashes with the way the world really works, things start to spiral down for both the Kanes, and tension builds in the film. A moment of violence both raises that tension to a high-pitch, and brings Quaid’s character back into their sphere, as the film rushes to its stark conclusion.

SOVEREIGN is a heartbreaking study of a father-son relationship impacted by extremist views, and a belief system (about which the film is unnecessarily vague) at odds with the real world, told in parallel with another father-son relationship. The story of the fathers and their sons is both gripping and moving because it is true, but ultimately, the film’s story is also a sad, grim experience, with tragic consequences all around.

SOVEREIGN opens in theaters in select cities and is available to rent or buy starting Friday, July 11, 2025.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars

BACK TO BLACK – Review

Marisa Abela stars as Amy Winehouse in director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s BACK TO BLACK, a Focus Features release. Credit: Olli Upton/Focus Features

Talented singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse’s tragic life was already the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, AMY in 2015, made a few years after her death in 2011at age 27 from alcohol poisoning. So my first reaction on hearing of the biopic drama BACK TO BLACK was to wonder if we needed another Amy Winehouse movie. The excellent 2015 documentary seems to have have told her story well and thoroughly, but reportedly the Winehouse family was unhappy with it. However, the family granted permission to the filmmakers of this new biopic drama, BACK TO BLACK, with access to materials and song use.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and writer Matt Greenhalgh previously collaborated on another music biopic, NOWHERE BOY, a fine drama about the childhood of John Lennon. The filmmakers assert that the Winehouse family had no say on the final film but the family does come across in a more positive light in this drama and they also have a more prominent role than in the 2015 Oscar-winning documentary.

BACK TO BLACK follows the familiar rise and fall pattern of biopics of other gifted but tragic musicians but does feature some nice acting performances and a chance to hear her songs again. It starts out with young Amy (Marisa Abela) on the verge of her fame, surrounded by her loving, working-class, Jewish family in the Southgate section of London. Amy is talented, and ambitious, and encouraged by her beloved paternal grandmother Nan (Leslie Manville), a still-cool, stylish, former jazz singer, who influenced Amy’s love of jazz and her ’50s-’60s fashion style of beehives, heavy eyeliner, and tight retro dresses. Amy is also funny, strong-willed, out-spoken, hot-tempered and driven. She also already has a big drinking problem.

First off, it is important to mention that the documentary is the much better film, and you will learn much more about the talented but self-destruction Amy Winehouse from it than this biopic. BACK TO BLACK often assumes the audience knows things about Amy Winehouse and her life that they may not, such as her struggles with bulimia, which makes for some confusing or even misleading scenes.

That said, Marisa Abela does a fine job portraying Winehouse, capturing her mannerisms, accent and assertive yet funny persona. The same is also true of the wonderful Lesley Manville as her beloved grandmother Cynthia, whom Amy calls Nan. Eddie Marsan is also very good as her father Mitch, along with Jack O’Connell as Amy’s charismatic, handsome but toxic husband Blake. Juliet Cowan plays Amy’s mother Janis Winehouse, a pharmacist suffering from multiple sclerosis, who raised Amy after separating from her father, and Sam Buchanan as Nick Shymansky, Amy’s friend her became her first manager, but the bulk of the narrative is carried by those first four characters.

The best parts of BACK TO BLACK are the cast’s performances and the chance to hear some of Amy Winehouse’s hit songs. However, the drama assumes that audiences know some things about Winehouse that they may not, and if you want to really learn about Amy Winehouse’s life and career, that Oscar-winning documentary is still the better choice. But you do get more of a feel for her family life and growing up Jewish in London’s Southgate in BACK TO BLACK.

Abela does her own singing and while she does well enough, she is an actress, not a singer, and certainly does not have Amy Winehouse’s distinctive, golden voice. Still, Abela does her best to sing in Winehouse’s style, and is at her most convincing singing the signature “Back to Black.” However, it would have better to have used Amy Winehouse’s real voice, instead of following this craze of actors playing famous singer doing their own singing, often with mixed results, and depriving fans of hearing the real star’s voice, the thing that made them famous.

Abela tries to capture Winehouse’s singing style, and does pretty well, but she is better in capturing Winehouse’s speaking voice, her mannerisms, and gives a convincing and touching portrayal of this funny, demanding, and fascinating talented woman who knew what she wanted and had a deep knowledge and love of jazz.

Lesley Manville is marvelous as Amy’s beloved grandmother Cynthia, a jazz singer who dressed stylishly and influenced Amy’s style and encouraged her musical interest from a young age. The film captures how Winehouse adored her paternal grandmother, whom she called Nan, and depicts Amy as she gets her tattoo paying tribute to her. The other delightful performance is from Eddie Marsan as Amy’s taxi-driver dad Mitch, who had a close loving relationship with his daughter but didn’t always make decisions in her best interests. As Amy’s career soars, dad Mitch is more of an ever-present figure, while mom Janice virtually disappears until late in the film. Mitch had a strong influence and worked closely with his daughter as her career took off, but was not always as good an influence.

Audiences may have some confusion over the relationship between Mitch and Cynthia, as Manville is only 12 years older than Marsan, and they look about the same age. It is easy to assume they are siblings rather than mother and son, and the drama does nothing to clarify this situation, one of the drama’s several problems.

The drama gives a little nod, although not enough, to Winehouse’s skill as a songwriter, and accurately depicts her as a perfectionist in her work, at least until drinking and drugging took their toll. While the bulimia is not directly mentioned until the end, the drama does a better job with her alcoholism, Even before her career really launches, Amy has already had a serious drinking problem, including incidents of seizures. A later scene depicts a confrontation with her manager about going to rehab, with her father siding with his daughter after she promises to cut back, something echoed in the lyrics of her song “Rehab.”

The film is stronger and more focused overall in its first half. The drama starts out fairly well, although it focuses more on Amy’s personal and family life than her career and work. However, it makes a turn into a doomed romance story after Amy meets her future husband Blake Fielder-Civil. The turning point comes after a strong, emotionally powerful sequence where Amy meets Blake. Those scenes are very good, with strong romantic chemistry between Abel and O’Connell, laying the groundwork for the obsessive, toxic love affair that follows. But once Amy falls for Blake, the film becomes increasingly disorganized, jumping around in time and failing to explain several things that pop up. There is a scene where the hard-drinking Amy discovers her new love’s drug problem and firmly rejects and even condemns drug use, yet in almost the next scene, we see Amy buying her own drugs, without Blake, leaving us puzzled as to what happened in between. The film continues to deteriorate in that fashion, ans once Manville’s Nan dies, both Amy and this drama go off the rails, morphing into a film about the toxic romance rather than her music, with Amy repeatedly talk about her longings to be a wife and mother.

Whether Blake was the real villain in Amy Winehouse’s life or not is another matter, as it seems more likely a combination of factors, including Amy’s self-destructive behavior, the loss of a strong hand to steady her with the death of her grandmother Cynthia (reportedly the only person she would listen to when she was out-of-control), a shark-like media, family and friends who failed to intervene to protect or help her, and her drug-addicted husband. But in this drama, the major blame is placed on a drug-addict husband who wanted to hitch his wagon to her rising star.

Although there are a few nice concert scenes after the biopic switches to toxic romance, the film continues to unravel, with several scenes that leave the audience confused about what is going on with the singer. While someone might argue that the film’s narrative falling apart might be meant to mirror Winehouse’s increasingly chaotic life, that explanation doesn’t really hold up. The film continues as a confusing mess until fizzles to a weak ending, with Amy walking away from the camera and seeming on the way to recovery, followed by a black screen and texts telling us of her death from alcohol poisoning at age 27. Then instead of just going to black, there is another scenes with Abela, instead of footage of the actual Amy, saying all she wanted to do was entertain with her songs.

Again, despite the strong performances and warm early scenes with family, you will not really learn much about Amy Winehouse in this biopic drama. Again, the 2015 documentary AMY is the better choice, and a better film overall, where you will learn much more about the massively talented but self-destructive Amy Winehouse.

BACK TO BLACK opens Friday, May 17, in theaters.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars

A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN – Review

Dana Canedy (ChantŽe Adams) and Charles Monroe King (Michael B. Jordan) in Columbia Pictures’ JOURNAL FOR JORDAN.

Denzel Washington directs this true-story based drama about love and loss, starring Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams as a mismatched couple who meet and fall in love. Career military man Charles and Dana Canedy, an editor at the New York Times, who meet and unexpectedly fall in love, and the journal of fatherly advice the soldier leaves behind for his son. The film opens with a single mother, Dana Canedy (Chanté Adams), in New York struggling to balance her high-pressure career and the responsibilities of caring for her toddler son Jordan while grappling with grief. Over the course of the two-track film, we see Jordan grow up along side flashbacks to his parents’ romance.

The film is based on Dana Canedy’s non-fiction book “A Journal for Jordan” on love and loss, and which was an expansion of her 2007 article. At first, director Denzel Washington focuses on Dana’s hectic life, alternating with a romantic, slightly comic portrait of the their romance. Later on, the director leans into the tragedy, family themes and patriotic ones of the story.

When they first meet at a birthday barbecue, Sgt. Charles Monroe King (Michael B. Jordan), a career soldier, and Dana Canedy (Chanté Adams), a New York Times editor, couldn’t seem more mismatched. The birthday barbecue is for her father, a drill sergeant with whom Dana, a sophisticated New Corker, has a testy relationship. The news that yet another of her drill Sergeant dad’s young soldiers is going to be there induces some eye-rolling on Dana’s part. Yet when she actually meets handsome Charles Monroe King, sparks fly. The two start an on-and-off long distance relationship, despite her New York sophistication and his penchant for corny dad jokes, that deepens over time, as Charles achieves his ambition to be a career drill sergeant and Dana’s journalism career soars.

Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams have a nice chemistry together, and her more outgoing, big-city character makes an appealing contrast to his ramrod straight, country boy sincerity. When a driver at a traffic signal fails to respond quickly when the light changes, Adams’ Dana reaches over and leans on the horn. By contrast, polite rule-follower Charles instructs her on the proper way to keep hands on the steering wheel at all times. While Dana is happy to drowse in bed in the morning, Charles bounces out of bed and starts doing push-ups on the floor. Michael B. Jordan fans will appreciate the many times the actor appears without his shirt, showing off his fine physique. Since a lot of the story seems to take place in Dana’s apartment, there are ample opportunities.

At first there is a romantic comedy vibe to the film. But just as the couple prepares to welcome their son Jordan and to wed, 9/11 happens. When Sgt. King is deployed to Iraq, Dana sends Charles off with a journal, and instructions to write in it every day he is gone, as a record of advice to his son.

That is, of course, the journal in the title, although Dana waits until Jordan is older to share it with him. The romance thread’s earlier romantic comedy bent yields to a more serious tone, as they anticipate the birth of their child and get engaged, and then tensely dramatic as the events of 9/11 unfold. The story of the romance unfolds along side scenes of Jordan growing up, hitting familiar milestones, but also painting a portrait of a woman working through grief. The two thread come together in a moment of grief, family and sense of duty at the end.

However, not every great, moving true story makes a great movie. The translating of this story to the screen loses some of the poetry of Canedy’s writing and the sentiment is heavy in this three-hankie tragic drama. Director Denzel Washington leans into the sentimental, although the romance has some nice comic turns early on, but the sentiment gets more ponderous as the story goes on. Fans of romantic weepers may be the best audience for this sentimental film, while others might find it too Hallmark Channel for their taste.

A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN opens Saturday, Dec. 25, in theaters.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars