Kick-Back Friday: #198
Small Town Murder Songs (2010): A heavy and heavily mustachioed Peter Stormare (the kidnapping guy from Fargo) plays Walter, a born-again cop who investigates the local murder of a stripper in his rural Canadian town. However, director Ed Gass-Donnelly places less emphasis on the murder than on the ideas of salvation, redemption, and forgiveness, particularly as they are informed by the local Mennonite community. Most notably Gass-Donnelly cuts up his too-short film with jarring sectional edits that feature bold, all-caps biblical admonitions and disturbing, percussion-heavy, group chants by the strangely named Canadian band Bruce Peninsula. With a plump Martha Plimpton and a trailer-trashy Jill Hennessey as Walter’s current and former girlfriends, respectively.