‘Bunker Hill’ | 2 1/2 stars
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
It’s like the gunfight at the OK Corral, except that instead of the Earps and Clantons we get the redneck members of the posse comitatus squaring off against a liberal coalition that includes a black man, a gay guy and a Muslim.
If that sounds kinda nutty, well, it is.
“Bunker Hill,” the latest from local filmmaker Kevin Willmott (“Ninth Street,” “C.S.A.”), delivers an over-the-top situation with a mostly straight face. The results are mixed, but one can safely say you’ve never seen anything quite like it. (It opens today at the Screenland Crossroads.)
After a jail term for insider trading, former Wall Street wiz Salem (James McDaniel, best known as Lt. Fancy on TV’s “NYPD Blue”) travels to the wee town of Bunker Hill, Kan., to visit his ex-wife, Hallie (Laura Kirk), and his two daughters. He sticks out like a sore thumb — an African-American in a black business suit surrounded by white Midwesterners in Stetsons and seed corn caps.
He gets a chilly welcome from Hallie, who has been dating McClain (Kevin Geer), the richest guy in town. But Salem is befriended by two of the burg’s outsiders. Farook (the great Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey) is a Pakistani who moved to Kansas years before to indulge his passion for all things cowboy. He runs the local gas station and convenience store with his son, Nadin (Ranjit Arab), a devout follower of Islam.
And then there’s Delmar (Blake Robbins), McClain’s racist right-wing little brother. Making trouble for black folks and “furriners” is his idea of a civic duty.
Like the TV show “Jericho,” “Bunker Hill” centers on the isolation of the town’s residents when all contact is lost with the outside world. There’s no electricity, car engines won’t start and transistor radios get nothing but static. Beset by fears, some townsfolk go Neanderthal, arming themselves from a cache of hidden illegal weapons and joining Delmar’s fascist militia.
It all ends with a gunfight on main street that spoofs (or honors, take your pick) old Westerns.
“Bunker Hill” is crawling with smart references to film genres. Early on there’s a community dance lifted intact from the John Ford playbook. And as was the case with Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” the screenplay by Willmott and Greg Hurd never gets around to telling us what’s happening outside the town. Nuclear war? Terrorist sabotage? Zombie infestation?
The acting ranges from quite good (McDaniel, Jaffrey, Kirk, Scott Allegrucci as a principled deputy sheriff) to just adequate. The film looks terrific (it was shot entirely on location in several Kansas towns), with dramatic landscapes and sunsets nicely captured by cinematographer Matt Jacobson.
Dramatically it’s a bit iffy. The screenplay explores various red state/blue state clichés, sometimes affirming them, sometimes exploding them, sometimes finding humor in them.
Finding precisely the right tone for this material would challenge any director. Willmott gets it right more than he gets it wrong, but there are a few moments when things slide into broad caricature. The film probably would have benefited from a more overtly parody approach. This is no time for subtlety.
‘BUNKER HILL’ ★★ 1/2
Director: Kevin Willmott
Cast: James McDaniel, Laura Kirk, Saeed Jaffrey
No MPAA rating; contains adult language, violence
Running time: 1:35
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