US AND THEM (2017)

Studio:       The Orchard
Director:    Joe Martin
Writer:       Joe Martin
Producer:  Danielle Clark
Stars:     Jack Roth, Tim Bentinck, Daniel Kendrick, Sophie Colquhoun, Paul Westwood, Carolyn Backhouse, Andrew Tiernan

Review Score:

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Summary:

A disenfranchised man holds a privileged family hostage in their home to make a political statement about the class divide.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

ANIMALS – Impersonating Phillipa’s lawyer boyfriend Glen, Danny is introduced under duress to Phillipa’s wealthy parents Margaret and Conrad Stonebridge. Danny carries the ruse through an uncomfortable dinner at the Stonebridge estate under the pretense that he is an average blue-collar man readying to wed their privileged daughter Phillipa. After deliberately creating class system conflict in their conversation, Danny is forcibly thrown out of the mansion by Conrad. However, Danny’s masked accomplices Tommy and Sean enter and draw guns on the family.

WHAT PHILLIPA KNOWS – With the Stonebridge family restrained to chairs, Phillipa recounts for her parents how three armed men ambushed her and Glen in the road. Danny forced Phillipa to escort him to the house and introduce him as Glen while her actual boyfriend was taken away by Tommy and Sean.

Sean records Danny delivering an entitled speech in front of the family about the growing divide between the greedy rich and disenfranchised poor, explaining that what he is about to do to the Stonebridges is a symbolic political statement of action against the 1%. Conrad imagines responding with a debasing tirade against Danny, but says nothing. Danny readies a roulette wheel.

WANKING WILL BE THE DOWNFALL OF MY GENERATION – In a flashback, Danny tells Tommy and Sean how angry he became while inadvertently eavesdropping on a conversation between Phillipa and Glen when they were on a date at a pub. Phillipa left her phone behind and after browsing its contents, Danny devised an idea to take a stand against a privileged family.

In the present, Danny demands that Conrad choose between his wife and his daughter. When Conrad refuses, Danny torches Conrad’s vintage automobile parked outside.

While Danny is outside, Tommy asks Conrad for the safe codes. Conrad says he won’t give up anything until his family is no longer in danger.

LAST CHANCE – Danny points his gun at Phillipa to force Conrad to make a choice. Tommy tackles Danny, saying that they won’t get any money if someone gets hurt. Danny counters that they aren’t stealing anything because that would cheapen his message.

Danny argues with Tommy and Sean about the purpose of the plan. At gunpoint, Danny sends Tommy and Sean out of the house without their masks and with their hands duct taped behind their backs.

CONFIDENCE TRICK – Danny recalls buying his handgun from Little Kev, though it is revealed to actually be a BB gun.

TRICKLE DOWN – Danny and Conrad continue arguing about the class divide. While Danny also recalls finding his father dead from suicide, Danny throws Conrad into the indoor pool and threatens to drown him if he doesn’t choose between Phillipa and Margaret. Conrad finally chooses Margaret.

COMPLICATIONS – A flashback shows Tommy convincing Sean that they should help Danny so that they can get their hands on Conrad Stonebridge’s watch collection.

Danny returns Conrad to the women and spins the roulette wheel, which lands on red three. Danny douses Margaret in gasoline. Danny throws a lighter, but intentionally allows the flame to extinguish before the gasoline ignites. Danny reveals that simply forcing the family to feel terror was his plan all along as he concludes his recorded statement. Glen unexpectedly enters and hits Danny with a shovel.

WHAT THE F-CK GLEN’S BEEN UP TO – In a flashback, Tommy and Sean tie up Glen in a shed. Glen eventually wears down his restraints on garden shears and escapes to the house.

Outside, Tommy and Sean break free from their duct tape and chase after Glen. Inside, Glen grabs Danny’s gun and shoots at Sean and Tommy as they enter, revealing the gun is fake. Danny and Tommy wrestle until Tommy unexpectedly stabs Danny to death.

REWARDED IN KIND – Tommy forces Conrad to unlock the safe. At the sight of an expensive watch in one hand and a bloody knife in the other, Tommy has a confrontation with Conrad about the salary gap between executives and employees. His mind altered by the turn of events, Tommy suddenly stabs and kills Conrad.

Tommy dumps gasoline on the captives and prepares to ignite the room. Tommy is next seen getting into a car outside to make his escape. Sean suddenly rises from the backseat and stabs Tommy as Danny’s camera continues recording.

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Review:

Working class wealth woes have preoccupied conversations over countless pints in countless pubs since before the term ‘blue collar’ existed.  Peasants.  Serfs.  The 99%.  History changes the words delineating the downtrodden, but the message of oppression remains the same.  The rich always get richer while the poor simply suck it up and take it.

Complaining to his mates is no longer enough for Danny.  Maybe he can’t narrow the societal divide.  But Danny is going to take a running leap across it with a roar instead of adding to the chasm of complacent commiseration echoing down below.

A chance bit of eavesdropping and a misplaced cellphone lights a bad idea bulb over his head.  Danny has the figurative keys to infiltrate an elitist estate and broadcast table turning torment where each side tastes how the other half lives.  For the Stonebridge Family, it’s a power play founded in psychological suffering.  For Danny, it’s a political statement.

To make sure his message his heard, Danny enlists two not-particularly-bright friends to aid with rope, duct tape, and recording duties.  Tommy and Sean are blinded by dollar signs, thinking they’re going to make money by smashing and grabbing a few fancy watches.  Danny has other ideas.  So do the Stonebridges.  By the end of the evening, this poorly-laid plan of one mad as Hell man will change everyone involved, and not for the better.

“Us and Them” is a home invasion thriller whose intensity comes from its class system commentary instead of simply the horror of being held hostage.  Think of it as having more in common thematically with “The Purge” (review here) than with “The Strangers,” so to speak.

Writer/director Joe Martin is clearly charged up on the Brexit/Trump climate of the film’s production year and channels that sociopolitical energy directly into context.  Danny is motivated by relatable feelings of disenfranchised animosity, yet his questionable method of straightening the seesaw makes him as much of a villain as an antihero.  The Stonebridges also argue their privilege from positions of entitlement as well as earnestness, adding two more sides to a cubed coin.

Tension comes from each fiery combatant being unwilling to budge, with no clear moral majority making either more in the right than the other.  This tug-of-war conflict powers suspense from people pissed for all the right and wrong reasons, ready to stand up and smite any threat to keep, or take, what they see as rightfully theirs.

Martin’s aggressive storytelling hand stays strong, though he falls into a bit of first-time narrative feature filmmaker quicksand by tearing too much from the playbook pages of Tarantino, Ritchie, and the rest when it isn’t really required.  Intertitle cards separate chapters arranged out of sequential order.  Some black humor and “aha!” moments come from backwards-filled blanks while other scenes don’t benefit at all from chronological confusion.

Another trap of shoved style comes from regularly juxtaposing classical music with coarser compositions from The Sleaford Mods and The Damned.  Take your pick of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi, and The 1812 Overture.  They’re all overused orchestrations for establishing bourgie backgrounds and “Us and Them” employs every one of them.  Screaming punk music underscores Danny’s end of the equation, except these vocal-heavy tracks are consistently placed under dialogue, creating more of a distraction than they should.

It’s a freshman faux pas of making music work harder than it has to when onscreen action conveys enough mood on its own.  It’s also the kind of thing Martin is likely, hopefully, to have out of his system by his sophomore spin.

The hook of “Us and Them” is the breakout performance of Jack Roth as Danny.  Even if you didn’t know his name or lineage, you’d recognize him instantly as the spitting image of his father Tim Roth.  The similarity doesn’t stop at physical appearance.  It’s in the unmistakable Mick Jagger sneer of smoldering intensity and calculating contempt that feels fueled by a powder keg.  Jack Roth’s motormouth and mannerisms suit Danny’s dangerous disposition to a T, and alone are enough to make the movie a worthwhile watch.

“Us and Them” ends, slightly vaguely, in perhaps the only sensible way it can considering the course taken.  At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if the movie’s food for thought isn’t fully swallowed because the climax chokes itself on sensationalistic action.

Still, “Us and Them” has more to chew on than many similar suspense stories.  Not only is its topical terror timely, it’s also timeless.  There may be no more entertaining way to reflect on the ever-present gap between haves and have nots than with a sometimes calm, sometimes chaotic crime thriller whose punch may not always aim straight, but nevertheless lands hard.

Review Score:  70

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