Green Room (2014)

Estimated Budget - $5M

Domestic Gross - $3M

Captain Picard and Mr. Chekov could not save this film, but I don’t think it needed saving. I don’t know if it was the advertising campaign, premise, or the subject matter, but something killed this film.

Let me give you the run-down.

If any musicians want to weigh-in on this, your input would be appreciated. It starts with a band trying to get a gig. The last gig they played did not pay much to the chagrin of the band members. But before they can extract their payment in flesh from the club promoter who booked it, he offers them another gig just a few hours’ drive away.

These kids are broke, as in without a pot to piss in nor a window out of which to throw it, broke. After a night’s sleep at the promoter’s house, they take off into the unknown Pacific Northwest with a van filled with instruments and notably lacking in gasoline. So they steal some from a car at a bowling alley and continue on.

Now they arrive at this location and it is a dump on a good day. Muddy parking lot filled with beat-up cars and the structure itself looked to be held together by will alone.

The band begins their load-out and find a few patrons milling about, who are all skinheads. Things are taking a downward turn for the band.

To give you a little insight into this group, they are what you would imagine a punk band to be. Not big on hygiene, passionate about their music, and desperate to make it in the biz. Mr. Chekov is part of the band and for their first song they play a cover called “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.” The crowd does not respond well to this and they get a luke-warm reception of their entire set. The gig ends, they get paid, and start to leave when one of them remembers he left his phone in the green room. He returns to the room in time to see one skinhead put a bullet in the back of the head of another skinhead.

Granted, it took a while to get here, but from this point forward it is riveting. Chekov dials 911 moments before the club manager forces the rest of the band back into the green room. Phones are confiscated and while holding a gun on the band, the manager tells them to just wait until Picard arrives.

This role made me chuckle because as you may be aware one of Patrick Stewarts closest friends is a gay Knight, literally a Knight of the British Empire. Google it.

The band overpowers the promoter and gets the gun. The problem is, of course, that there are about 100 skinheads between them and the exit. So they wait.

Enter the Picard. Calm, intelligent, confident. The presence that kept the Enterprise crew focused and on task through every shit-storm the universe could throw at them is the leader of the Nazis. It was uncomfortable to watch and I got the distinct impression that Picard was uncomfortable with the script. The two times he used the N-word he faced away from the camera. It may not have been him saying that word at all. So good on him but still he was the leader of the Nazis.

After some back and forth through a barricaded door, the band agrees to give Picard the gun—their only leverage. It makes no sense in any other circumstances, however, no one can be held accountable when confronted with the charisma of Jean-Luc. The moron that extends his hand through the small opening gets his hand run through a meat-grinder of knives and piano wire.

The band rips up the flooring, seeking a way out only to discover a large but unstaffed heroin lab. That’s how the Nazis were funding themselves. Heroin.

Picard has convinced two of the younger Nazis to stage a knife fight in the parking lot so that when the cops arrive they assume the call was about them and takes them away.

The skinheads send in the pit bulls and to sum up, the battle goes back and forth. The band acquires a shotgun, the pit bulls get shot or driven away, the band makes a break for it but gets driven back into the green room.

Patrick Stewart calls in the ‘Red Laces’ and the battle continues.

At some point, one of the skinheads realizes that dozens are dead and decides to call it quits and basically surrenders to the two remaining band members.

These two tell him to turn himself in and tell what happened while they go in pursuit of Picard who has long since fled the scene. They find Picard trying to bury some dead band members, plant evidence of a drug deal gone bad and, generally clean up the whole mess.

They kill Picard. End of movie.