RED, WHITE & WASTED

(director: Sam Jones/Andrei Bowden Schwartz; editor: Barry Poltermann/Michael T. Vollmann; music: Brooke & Will Blair; cast:  Matthew “Pat” Burns (self), Kristi Burns (self), Jessi Burns (self); Runtime: 89; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Noah Lang; Dark Star; 2019)

“I don’t see anything in this ugly slice-of-life doc that catches my interest.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The documentary by filmmakers Sam Jones and Andrei Bowden Schwartz takes place just outside of Orlando, Florida, in Central Florida, as it studies a redneck family of Trump supporters, the cretin-like middle-aged Matt Burns and his two adult daughters Kristi and Jessi. The low-income white family likes mudding (Matt is the ringleader of the “Swamp Ghost” mud hole, where he comes with his redneck group in monster trucks to paddle around in the mud), drink beer, chase after babes, openly make racist remarks and wave their beloved Confederate flag wherever they go. The intolerant Matt, who can stand only his kind of folks, earns a meager living as a scrapper/scavenger, who goes dumpster-diving in the garbage for scrap metal, which he sells.

I don’t see anything in this ugly slice-of-life doc that catches my interest. That deplorable families like this are part of the Trump base, tells us nothing new nothing about them. They’re just a part of Trump’s 35% base or so that helped elect the most unfit and most mentally incapacitated president America ever had. It seems their ignorance won’t ever change, as these folks have no ability to be reflective.

The only positive about the film is that it serves as a sociological time capsule of the age we’re living in. It shows the kind of people that voted for a president who crippled the country and how the rednecks scapegoat the country of immigrants for ruining their country.

REVIEWED ON 9/14/2020  GRADE: C