BUSHWICK: Too Bland & Boring To Be The Real Brooklyn

The recent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia and elsewhere over the removal of Confederate monuments, and the violent clashes that have resulted, make the notion of a second American Civil War frighteningly realistic. Enter Bushwick, the kind of blockbuster that only comes around once a year – in August, when there is nothing better in theaters because everyone is on vacation, enjoying the glow of the last dying embers of summer instead of huddled inside a dark movie theater.

Directed by Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott, who previously collaborated on the 2014 horror-comedy Cooties, Bushwick chronicles the titular Brooklyn neighborhood’s response to an armed militia sent on behalf of the state of Texas. It should have been an exciting and timely response to our nation’s difficulties. Instead, it is just plain boring.

Don’t Mess With Texas

Lucy (Brittany Snow) is a college student returning home to Bushwick to visit the grandmother who raised her. Accompanied by her boyfriend, who will be meeting her grandmother for the first time, Lucy is cheerful and excited to be back in Brooklyn – that is, until she gets off the train to discover that her beloved neighborhood has turned into a war zone.

The streets are mostly empty with the exception of armor-clad militiamen shooting at anything that moves and a few looters taking advantage of the chaos. Lucy is lucky enough to run into a former military man, Stupe (Dave Bautista), who reluctantly agrees to escort her across what has become a literal minefield to her grandmother’s house before making his way to New Jersey.

As Lucy and Stupe make their way across Bushwick, they learn that the attack is being facilitated by Texas, who have hired an army of mercenaries to take over Brooklyn and use it as a bargaining chip in negotiations to secede from the United States. Apparently, the Texans were hoping that the diversity of Bushwick would make it impossible for the people who live there to come together to defend themselves. Instead, the mercenaries, expecting an easy surrender (a clear sign they had never before been to Brooklyn), were met with the fiery wrath of the neighborhood’s residents, who aren’t going down without a fight.

Where Brooklyn At?

Full disclosure: I used to live in Bushwick, as did several of my friends. I’m familiar with its various subway lines, graffiti-covered walls and abandoned factories-turned-apartments; I know what parts remain populated by diverse working-class folks and what parts have been invaded by white college-educated hipsters who just can’t afford the rent anywhere else. I was honestly looking forward to watching a movie that took place in a corner of the borough that I actually used to live in, something different than the usual shots of swanky Park Slope brownstones or kooky Coney Island carnies.

So, when the first scene of the film began on a subway platform that I know is not in Bushwick – the Church Avenue F/G stop, for those who care – I immediately started feeling pretty unfavorable towards the movie. After all, it’s in the very nature of New Yorkers to be uptight over the correctness – or lack thereof – of the subway lines featured in movies; it’s right up there with lecturing people about why Times Square is overrated and why folding your pizza slice is the only way to eat it.

But seriously, if you’re going to set your movie in a very specific Brooklyn neighborhood, own it. At least make an effort to use the correct subway stop signage – or, worse comes to worse, pull an Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and invent some new ones.

On another subway-related note: While another American Civil War might actually seem like a realistic development right now, it still seems impossible for Lucy to have been on the train long enough for the neighborhood to become a war zone without her hearing about it along the way. Most subway stops have WiFi now; wouldn’t she have received a message from someone, or at least checked her phone for news, the way most New Yorkers do nonstop on a long subway ride? You can’t tell me that all phone and Internet service across the boroughs went out in the time that it took her to take the subway from wherever she came from into Bushwick.

Also, wouldn’t there have been other people on the train? Even if she flew in from a college out of the country, it’s unbelievable that she could have made it all the way from one of the area’s airports to Bushwick without running into someone who would have mentioned that the neighborhood was under attack, especially since enough has already gone down for things to be entirely apocalyptic by the time she gets off the train.

If This Is Our Future, We’re Doomed

This opening subway scene is just one of the many ridiculous things about Bushwick, which manages to take an incredibly timely and intriguing concept and execute it in a way that is mind-numbing to watch. The film is shot in very long takes with roving, shaking cameras in what I imagine is an attempt to mimic the anxiety-inducing real time storytelling of Victoria, the 2015 drama about one woman’s insanely action-packed night in Berlin that unfolds over only one unbelievable, 138-minute take.

Yet Bushwick lacks that film’s magnetic quality, partially because the characters are not as interesting and partially because the action sequences are not that engaging. You can shoot an exciting action sequence without a lot of frenetic editing, as Atomic Blonde provided with great aplomb this summer, but Bushwick resorts to long takes of endless running and gunfire, occasionally punctuated by an explosion or two.

As for the characters: Bushwick talks up the diversity of the neighborhood as being a great asset in the fight against the Texas separatists, yet for most of the movie we’re only tagging along with Lucy and Stupe. If Bushwick had been shot as an ensemble film, following different, diverse groups of residents across the neighborhood dealing with the attack in their own unique ways, only for them all to come together in the end to defeat the invaders, then it might have been a more satisfying story.

But the film takes way too long to introduce us to people apart from Lucy and Stupe, both of whom are lacking in any qualities to make us truly care about them. This isn’t the fault of Snow or Bautista, both capable performers who try their damndest to make something out of the nearly nonexistent script credited to Nick Damici and Graham Reznick; Snow is stuck repeatedly screaming expletives and wondering out loud what is going on, while Bautista responds to her hysteria in monosyllabic grunts.

It all culminates in an ending so bleak that as the credits roll, one is left wondering what the point of sitting through those 94 minutes was. Is it supposed to be a warning to us all that if we don’t come together soon we’ll all meet tragic ends? If so, I wish that it had been better, as moviegoers aren’t likely to pay attention to it in its current state.

Bushwick: Conclusion

Bushwick tries very hard to make a timely statement about the importance of diversity in America via the unconventional vehicle of the action movie, reminding us that if we all dismiss our differences and work together for the greater good, we can overcome any obstacle. With the country as divided as it is at this moment, it’s clear that this is an incredibly important message. Yet while the film makes an admirable effort to convey it, in the end one only hears white noise.

What do you think? Are films like Bushwick timely right now, or a bit too exploitative? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Bushwick was released in the U.S. and the UK on August 25, 2017. For all international release dates, see here.