Shotgun Stories poster & wallpaper

Barlow Jacobs, Cole Hendrixson, Coley Canpany

Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers disc...( read more  read more... )over the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.

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79% liked it

1,897 ratings

Critics

93% liked it

40 critics

PG-13, 1 hr. 32 min.

Directed by: Jeff Nichols

Release Date: December 31, 2007

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DVD Release Date: July 1, 2008

Stats: 299 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (299)

  • kiriyamakazou
    January 30, 2009
    kiriyamakazou
    Shotgun Stories is a sadly ignored film. Though it treads similar paths as many revenge films, Shotgun Stories is the quiet one nobody notices. Like all good revenge films it shows the tragic escalation of violence and the terrifying cyclical nature of it. Unlike other revenge fi...( read more)lms it is a subtle masterpiece. To see a film that makes you feel the emotions and relate to characters without any noticeable manipulation or build up is a testament to such great film making. No dramatic music or quick cuts. The actors say realistic things in realistic ways and we can perfectly empathise with both sets of brothers. Reminiscent of All the Real Girls in the way it treats as though the audience as grown ups.
  • habitualdamnation
    December 25, 2008
    habitualdamnation
    A movie that wants to take its own time. No attempt at any sort of memorable cinematic drama. Just a slow story that's exceedingly realistic in its narrative. Not a very rewardin endin, though.
  • Jungian
    July 24, 2008
    Jungian
    "You raised us to hate those boys, and we do. And now it's come to this."
    rejected by major film distributors, it was saved by the festival circuit. thank god for small favors. this film is a quiet, sympathetic, and subtle triumph about how we relate with one another.
  • bort16
    June 11, 2008
    bort16
    Having been ignored and pushed aside by big studios and distributers, and overshadowed by big money makers, Jeff Nichols Shotgun Stories has gotten limited release. As much as I enjoy finding the hidden gems, it always makes me a little bit sad to see a film so great passed over...( read more). Filmed primarily in 2004, and released last year, Shotgun Stories has gotten a nice word of mouth and critical following. Roger Ebert announced it would play at his Overlooked Film Festival, and recently published a 4 star review.
    The film centers on Son Hayes and his brothers, Boy and Kid. They were given their names by their alcoholic deadbeat father, who birthed them, left them as if they were never born, then reformed his ways, stopped drinking, became a born again Christian and fathered a new family. The boys were left, as Son says, to be "raised by a hateful woman," who taught them to hate their fathers new family, and they do. When their father dies, the brothers show up at his funeral, make an impromptu speech, which the new sons, with proper names, do not take kindly to.
    Writer/director Nichols handles his film with the greatest of care. Not a word of dialogue is uttered that seems inplausible. Nothing is wasted on exposition. For instance, what we know about the Father, we learn only through the brief speech made by Son at the funeral. It feels real, it feels to the point, and best of all, in a few short words it never feels like exposition. Nichols takes his time, never rushing, but wasting nothing. The end result is a visceral experience.
    The actors all deliever excellent performances, especially Michael Shannon, who seems to be off and on in alot of roles. Here he is definatly on.
    This film gets under your skin, takes you into the world of these characters and never lets you go. There are deaths in the film, and when it happens midway through, a sense of loss, of sadness, and of rage is felt by the audience for the remainder.
    It never boils down into a standard revenge film, but simply muddles in the mundane and sad lives of its characters. Although this film exudes a sense of sadness that few other films could aspire to, its not depressing. I would not dare reveal the films resolution, only to say that it comes sensibly, after a moment of great realization.
    Nichols shows himself to be a serious filmaker to watch in the future. This is a profound and wise film. And a great one too.
  • cacutshaw
    January 24, 2009
    cacutshaw
    Outstanding revenge drama with excellent understated performances, especially Shannon. Like a modern Hatfield and McCoy showing the consequences and futility of revenge. Highly recommended.
  • kubrickian
    October 10, 2009
    kubrickian
    Sparse. Bleak. It never does anything more than it needs to and to great effect.
  • magnolia12883
    September 23, 2009
    magnolia12883
    Jeff Nichols' Southern Gothic melodrama concerns a blood feud which has its roots in the past and spirals down through time, infecting the lives and minds of an entire family, soiling the present and almost claiming the future. The film concerns two sets of half-brothers in a rus...( read more)tic small town in Arkansas. The first set, we learn, was raised by an alcoholic father and a mother who they refer to simply as "a hateful woman." This fraternal set is led by Son Hayes (Michael Shannon), seemingly the eldest, whose wife Annie (Glenda Pannell) has just left him (with their young son) and whose "system" for gambling at a local casino is a perpetual failure. He works at a fish farm for a living, and when his wife leaves him, he invites his younger brothers Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs) to sleep at his house. Kid sleeps in a tent in Son's backyard, and aspires to marry his own girlfriend. Boy, the gentlest and biggest pacifist of them all, teaches basketball to local youths and lives in a van, and there's a running gag that his fan shorted out his radio, so now the same heavy metal tape plays over and over, sporadically jolting to life in fits and starts, utterly unpredictable and occasionally inappropriate. One day, the trio's mother comes to inform them their father is dead. "When's the funeral," asks Son. "You can find out in the newspaper," she coldly replies. "You going," asks Son. "No," says the "hateful woman." At the funeral, Son and his kin are clearly not welcome but his father's second wife (Natalie Canerday of "Sling Blade" and "October Sky") allows him to say one or two things. His recollections of his father are not kind, and he caps it off by literally spitting on the man's grave. This leads to a fight with the man's four grown children from his second marriage, and soon the fight will escalate before spiraling out of control. First one side of the family does something, then the other retaliates, and on and on. So entrenched in this rivalry will these men become that it never once is said out-right that they all have the same father (how they're related) and thus they never consider themselves one big family, but rather like two small warring tribes from the same culture. Where will it end? Not where you think, amazingly enough. Jeff Nichols, who wrote and directed, has made an astonishingly assured and gripping feature debut. Born in Little Rock, he is working in the same milieu as writer-director David Gordon Green ("George Washington," "All the Real Girls," "Undertow"); it's no coincidence that Green helped produce this film. Green also lent his second unit cinematographer Adam Stone to be the head cinematographer on this film and it shows; Nichols is drawn to the same ostensibly simplistic widescreen compositions that Green is, including the beautiful shots of the rustic Southern landscape, the subtle camera movements on stationary figures and objects, and the lush greens of the grass and blues of the sky. Although the film is technically a revenge tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, it is not without a scintilla of humor: there's the battles between Boy and his van, the first run-in with a goofy ex-classmate named Shampoo (G. Alan Wilkins), and consider too this brilliant interchange between the brothers one lazy afternoon:

    * "This is one broken-ass town."

    * "It's like we own it."

    * "If I owned this town, I'd sell it."

    * "We don't own the square-root of shit."

    Nichols knows this world inside and out, and in that scene (among others) manages to paint a picture perfect portrait of what it is like to be these people, in this time and place. He listens to how his characters talk, sees clearly how they relate to one another and the world around them; his film is almost a dramatic documentary. The performance by Michael Shannon ("Bug," "World Trade Center") is intensely and fiercely controlled; he's one of our finest "unknown" actors. It is surprising, then, that he turns out to be less than a hero; his mother raised he and his brothers to hate her dead husband's second family and they have resented Son and his kin for their hatred of their shared father. One of Son's brothers wants the fighting to stop, and is willing to rationalize, talking his way out of the breach; he will single-handedly save his entire family's future. It is that final turn of the plot that makes this film more than just the fascinating and absorbing slice of life-turned-thriller it already was; it is that final turn which makes this film deep, wise and profoundly moving. It's one of the year's very best films.



    NOTE: This film has had distribution trouble, and after film festivals and extremely limited theatrical runs, always favorable to those who saw it, it finally came to DVD in 2008. Seek it out.
  • kingmob6
    July 4, 2009
    kingmob6
    A quiet character study about the feud that comes to the surface after a father of several children dies in rural Arkansas.

    A man has three children, treats them and his spouse like shit for many years, then divorces, moves ACROSS TOWN basically, finds God, remarries and has fou...( read more)r more children, who he treats wonderfully.

    The older three boys are all raised to hate their half-brothers, and with the old man dead, all of this tension comes to a bloody head.

    An interesting slice of Americana, this is a slow and measured look at life in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else's business.

    Give it a rental.
  • DrRock9000
    May 24, 2009
    DrRock9000
    Timmy hates it, Jerf loves it. The truth lies somewhere in between. The problem with some indie films, as with this one, is that it's a good story that should take no more than an hour to tell, but the filmmakers need to stretch it out to make that 90 minute milestone. Don't g...( read more)et me wrong, there's not a damn thing wrong with slow pacing but there needs to be valid reasoning for it and I could sense the effort in making this one last it's course and it takes away from what is otherwise a very good screenplay. Please though, spare me two things: 1. The casting of a non-actor to play the part of 'Shampoo' just to get an authentic "feel" for a backwoods Arkansas meth dealer. and 2. The first names of the three leads. We already get it, their dad was an asshole. Leave that shit to Jim Jarmucsh. Beyond that, a solid effort from first time director, Jeff Nichols.
  • gryph5150
    April 30, 2009
    gryph5150
    Michael Shannon stars in this slow-moving revenge story filmed largely in my hometown of England, Arkansas. Kinda bummed though that I didn't get a cameo in this. I would have been a natural.

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Critic Reviews

June 6, 2008
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Few films are so observant about how we relate with one another. Few are as sympathetic. full review

March 24, 2008
David Edelstein, New York Magazine

Shotgun Stories has a flawless cast, but it's the peculiarity of Michael Shannon that keeps it from becoming too obvious. full review

View more Shotgun Stories reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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