National Anthem (2024)

“Dylan” (Charlie Plummer) lives with his mum and younger brother and works, where he can, in construction to put food on the table. One day, he picks up some work with a travelling rodeo circus - loads of aspiring Buffalo Bills. The thing is, most of them are gay and aside from roping the ponies they put on some drag shows and have all the concomitant relationship issues that you’d expect to find amongst a community that is tightly night and highly strung. He is welcomed by all, and swiftly takes a shine to “Sky” (Eve Lindley) who is in an open relationship with “Pepe” (Rene Rosado) and for the rest of this film we follow that turbulent scenario set against more of his own family’s discord and his own desires to save his cash to buy an SUV and travel the land. There is something really quite visceral about Plummer’s efforts here and the grand expanse of scenery is really well captured by the photography, but the story. It’s all just too safe. It’s sort of like inserting a straight dynamic into “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, only this really does lack for much humour and is, especially towards the end, a rather earnest and plodding melodrama that I thought just ran out of steam. It’s a story about love, lust and acceptance, but delivers nothing we haven’t seen before across an whole range of cinema genres. Indeed, it’s almost compartmentalised to ensure the main plot has virtually nothing at all to do with the film’s USP. It had the potential to rock the boat a bit, but I was really quite disappointed, sorry.