American Sausage Standoff: A Forced Meat Farce with Greasy Satirical Filler
By Liam Lacey
Rating: C
Anyone considering a movie called American Sausage Standoff (a.k.a. Gutterbee) should expect an odd comedy, though they might not expect one quite as eccentric as this Western by Danish actor-turned-director Ulrich Thomsen.
A sub-Coen Brothers allegorical black comedy, American Sausage Standoff follows the battle between a Bavarian sausage maker and a Christian in the small cowboy town of Gutterbee.
It also features a racist immigrant-hunting rooster, a cabaret-singing town boss, and considerable discussion about the varieties of intestine casings that can be stuffed with meat.
Ewen Bremner has big dreams for sausage in American Sausage Standoff.
Artfully shot by ace cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire, Antichrist, 127 Hours) and narrated by local sherrif (Chance Kelly) in a style reminiscent of Sam Elliott’s Stranger in The Big Lebowski, the film feints at a classiness which it soon abandons for greasier concerns.
In the geographically nebulous town of Gutterbee, middle-aged cowboy crooner, Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. (Deadwood’s W. Earl Brown), is the town bully. At night, he performs cowboy songs at his own cabaret, with his underappreciated son as the sole audience member.
The rest of the time Jimmy spends hunting down and expelling anyone he thinks is foreign, with the goal of “making Gutterbee great again.” That’s just in case anyone had trouble identifying his political stripe.
When one of Jimmy’s henchmen Mike (Antony Starr) gets released from a short jail sentence for vandalizing a Chinese restaurant on Jimmy’s behalf, he wants to do something better with his life. After giving up on his decorative necktie business, he joins forces with a morose German misfit, Edward Hofler (Scottish actor, Ewen Bremner, who came to fame in Trainspotting). Hofler, who was orphaned and raised by the Salvation Army (which has given him a lifelong intolerance for religion), has recently bought a rundown chapel, which he plans to turn into a sausage factory called The Gourmet House of Refuge.
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Edward’s other enthusiasm is furniture restoration, and he befriends barmaid Sue, (Pia Mechler) when he offers to oil her wooden leg. A fan of all things antique and ceremonial, Hofler practices Tyrolean slap dancing and lectures on Christianity versus sausages, a theme based in some historical reality. (Weirdly, Seth Rogen’s adult animated comedy, Sausage Party, also explored religious concerns of encased meat products. Perhaps, we are nothing more than sausages with souls.)
When Jimmy discovers that Edward and his sausages are not American, he’s determined to drive them both out of town. He’s backed by a local evangelist, Luke (Clark Middleton), an angry bird-like bully, who can smell the potential profit in a good hate campaign.
Once Thomsen has his opposing camps lined up, it becomes an increasingly combatative back-and-forth with little satiric payoff. Bremner’s entertaining turn as a German sausage pedant aside, the film’s villains are unrelievedly repellent, both in the crimes they commit and their punishment. Although it’s nearly always fun to see bigots ridiculed, it’s usually better to leave mean and stupid to the other side.
American Sausage Standoff. Written and directed by Ulrich Thomsen. Starring: Antony Starr, W. Earl Brown, Ewen Bremner, Pia Mechler and Chance Kelly. American Sausage Standoff is available on VOD, including iTunes/AppleTV on Aug. 27.