Sydney Sweeney and an Eclectic Cast Leads the Entertaining Western-Noir Hybrid Americana

It takes a little while, maybe as much as half the movie, to adjust the self-conscious rhythms of Americana, a multi-character, noirish modern Western. Early on, when young Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman) identifies himself to his sister’s scumbag boyfriend Dillon (Eric Dane) as “the reincarnation of Sitting Bull,” the seeming abuser responds with “that’s offensive” – a funny character note, that a macho jackass would adopt a glimmer of decorum just to angrily correct a tween kid. But as long as he’s being surprisingly aware, maybe he should lead with “that’s cutesy” – which is more of the danger in writer-director Tony Tost’s feature debut. Though bodies eventually start to pile up, experienced students of post-Tarantino crime movies may instead nervously anticipate the point where Americana becomes toxically pleased with itself.

Happily, the moment never quite arrives. This despite the movie spending a not inconsiderable amount of time in a small South Dakota diner, where Penny Jo (Sydney Sweeney) works as a waitress, begging for a QT-style standoff to break out. Indeed, Penny Jo overhears Dillon chatting with a wealthy benefactor named Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex) about a robbery; Roy, a collector of American artifacts, will pay Dillon a modest amount of money to steal a Native American ghost shirt from Pendelton Duvall (Toby Huss, for one scene). Penny Jo knows the shirt is worth even more than Roy is letting on, and figures if she can somehow intercept it, the proceeds of a sale might pay for her to go to Nashville and take her shot at a singing career. She enlists diner regular Lefty (Paul Walter Hauser) to help her hash out a plan. Lefty enacts the longstanding tradition of doing something mostly out of desire to hang out with a pretty girl, though he’s more sweetly dedicated than lascivious. (We see him recite a prewritten and premature marriage proposal to another woman earlier on.)

The promise of the ghost shirt also draws in Dillon’s fed-up girlfriend Mandy (Halsey), looking for money to start fresh again, and Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), a member of a radical native group. It may have been around the time that Ghost Eye explains that he named himself after Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai and enthusiastically recommends that Jim Jarmusch movie to Cal that Americana won me over. It’s the kind of reference that might pop on Poker Face, the clever detective series where Tost has served as showrunner for its most recent season.