★★★ (3 out of 4)
The corrupting influence of parenthood, shown this week in the fact-based “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” continues apace in the fact-based “Sovereign,” now in theaters where its impact is shattering. The title is drawn from “sovereign citizen,” a term meant to describe someone who subscribes to a pseudolegal belief system that claims individuals are not subject to government laws and regulations unless they explicitly consent to them. They believe they can operate outside of the established legal system by misinterpreting legal concepts and employing specific procedures. This ideology is not recognized by courts or law enforcement and is often associated with extremist views and potential for violence.
Got that? OK, let’s move on. The dynamite performances of Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay as a father and son caught in the crosshairs of what it means to be “sovereign” provides the impetus for the drama based on the real life 2010 West Memphis shootings, in which self-declared sovereign citizen Jerry Kane and his son, Joseph, murdered West Memphis officers Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans.
In his feature debut as a writer-director, Christian Swegal wants to take us inside that movement and show us the cost of being lost inside an ideology. Offerman, best known for comic roles such as Ron Swanson on the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” switches gears to play Kane, a blustering, buzzcut radical hothead seeking converts in Northwest Arkansas. Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that character a comic spin on Swanson, the old-school office manager who values structure, discipline and the belief that government is inefficient and should be dissolved?
In a macabre way, yes. But you won’t be laughing at anything Offerman does as Kane, including educating fools who don’t see things his way. His toxic influence is deeply felt by his 15-year-old son, Joe, played by Tremblay, best known as the kidnapped five-year-old son of rape victim Brie Larson in “Room.” Tremblay’s Joe swallows the gun-crazed preachings of his dad, an unemployed roofer, with ease, to the point of wearing matching white suits while they preach.
Things change when dad is pulled over and arrested for carrying an illegal weapon, giving Joe a breathing period in juvenile detention. The local police chief, John Bouchart, played by a cliché-busting Dennis Quaid, steps in when Kane’s sometime girlfriend Lesley-Anne (a terrific Martha Plimpton ) bails him out, only to find Kane more militant than before.
Swegal takes time to contrast the parenting of Kane with the chief, whose grown son Adam (Thomas Mann), is in training to be a cop. The chief preaches tough love when Adam coddles his newborn son. And in contrasting the lifestyles of both fathers in the not so different ways they raise their sons, he creates a family drama that pulls us in as it pulls us away from the portrait of a divided America that never gets the dramatic development it needs.
This is no knock on the performances. Quaid and Mann work wonders on characters always on the verge of slipping into the quicksand of cliché. But the film belongs to the prime father-son at the heart of “Sovereign.” Tremblay finds the sorrow always lurking inside Joe’s sad eyes as his emotions swing from the dad he loves to the man he’d like to be on his own.
Still, the film belongs to Offerman as a willing victim of his own delusions. Even when the director guides “Sovereign” to a tragic climax that’s too easy to see coming, Offerman—in a virtuoso performance—creates a character who has estranged himself from the human species he has long ago forgotten to call his own. This you don’t want to miss.