OUR MOVIE REVIEW:

In Americana, the American West isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a living, breathing stage where myth, greed, and heartbreak jostle for screen time. Tony Tost, the showrunner of Poker Face and creator of Longmire, makes his feature debut here as the writer/director – and he comes out swinging. 

The film’s opening scene is a knockout, equal parts Yellowstone menace and pitch-black comedy that lets you know you’re not in for a polite indie trail drive.

A small, white boy, Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman), is glued to an old “cowboys and Indians” show while his mother, Mandy (Halsey), flees the scene after knocking out her boyfriend, Dillon (Eric Dane). When Dillon wakes up and stumbles outside, Cal – headband on and clutching a child-size bow – calmly declares he’s the reincarnation of Sitting Bull. Dillon barely has time to roll his eyes before Cal sinks an arrow in his neck, and fade to the boy wandering off into the wide-open expanse. It’s a shocking, gaspingly funny, and utterly magnetic moment.

From there, Americana splinters off into a multi-thread chase across sun-baked plains and shadowy diners. There’s Lefty Ledbetter (Paul Walter Hauser in one of his best, most nuanced performances), a good-hearted ranch hand with a history of premature marriage proposals. He openly jokes about suffering a head injury while serving in the military, but doctors “didn’t find anything” inside. 

There’s Penny (an understated Sydney Sweeney), a shy waitress with a stutter and dreams of Nashville stardom. She’s written 43 original songs and “about four are good,” she admits. And there’s Roy (Simon Rex), a scuzzy operator looking to flip a stolen Lakota Ghost Shirt for half a million, with Dillon as his muscle.

When Lefty overhears the scheme, he and Penny decide to swipe the shirt to help bankroll a trip to Nashville. What follows is a crisscrossing pursuit involving Mandy, Cal, Dean, Dillon, and Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), a Lakota man who leads an Indigenous resistance group and has his own claim to the artifact. The script dances between these intersecting storylines with Tarantino-esque chapter headings – some linear, some not – and titles like “Mr. Fuckface Arrives” that only adds to the deadpan charm. 

Tost’s writing is whip-smart and his characters instantly feel lived-in. The humor swings from sly to absurd without losing its grip on the emotional stakes. What’s more, the commentaries on gender stereotypes and cultural appropriation could’ve been heavy-handed, but Tost threads them with a nimble touch. 

The cast is uniformly excellent, but Bergman’s Cal is the glue that holds it all together. He’s stoic, sincere, and weirdly profound. Hauser’s Lefty is all heart and sincerity beneath his subdued delivery, and Sweeney turns Penny into the kind of character you quietly root for even after the credits. 

Visually, Americana is a stunner. The cinematography captures the vast, aching beauty of the plains with precision and care. And the music cues that shuffle through country, folk, and twangy rock couldn’t be better timed and curated. All of it blends together expertly. 

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If there’s a flaw, it’s that Tost loads the machine with so many moving parts that at times you wonder if he can really keep them all moving. But by the time the dust settles in a fiery final act, you realize you’ve been watching a magic trick. The payoff is as heartfelt as it is bloody, the way a great country song can make you dance and cry in the same chorus.

In a year already crowded with ambitious debuts, Americana easily stands out. It’s funny, sweet, violent, visually gorgeous, and slyly political – an American fable for a land still very much wrestling with its own identity. Tost, as a filmmaker, certainly is not; he’s already arrived.