I like “siege” films.  In fact, one of my all time favorite films is John Carpenter’s very low budget 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13 (avoid the 2005 remake)…

So when I heard about the plot of the 2015 film Green Room, I was intrigued.  Especially considering the director and writer of the film, Jeremy Saulnier, was also responsible for the intriguing 2013 movie Blue Ruin.

Like Blue Ruin, Green Room is a tense, though low budget thriller which involves a down on their luck punk rock band that barely scrapes by between low-attendance gigs.  They travel some 90 miles out of their way under the promise of a concert only to find the venue is now closed to the man who offered them the job.  To make up for it, the man offers them another gig at a relative’s place but warns them the venue is made up of neo-Nazis.  As long as they do the gig and not get political, he tells them, they’ll be fine.

Hard up for the cash, the band heads to the venue and performs.  But, after the performance, a cell phone left behind in the venue’s green room (the place where the band prepared for the concert) winds up causing them to witness a murder.  From there, the band and an unlikely ally are forced to fight for their lives to get out of this closed-in place.

Green Room, as mentioned before, is a “siege” film.  What that means is that you have the main character(s) locked in a small area while bad-guys mercilessly assault them from without.  In the very best siege films, the characters are inevitably outnumbered and outgunned and have to rely on their wits, rather than strength, to survive.

In the case of Green Room, the characters presented aren’t the sharpest and are likely more than a little buzzed after the concert but do realize quickly, though not quickly enough, the extent of their predicament.  Like the best of the siege films, not everyone survives and likeable -as well as unlikeable- characters meet their fate in brutal ways.

The movie’s cast is solid, with the late Anton Yelchin playing Pat, the band’s leader.  Alia Shawkat, often a more familiar face in comedic roles, is also very good as Sam, another band member and confidant of Pat.

But clearly the biggest, splashiest -and surprising- role is that of neo-Nazi leader Darcy, played by Patrick Stewart.  Unfortunately, this bit of “big” casting, to me, didn’t work quite as well as I hoped it would.

Taking a very well known -and for the most part beloved- actor and sticking him/her into a nasty role has been done before and sometimes to very good effect.  Henry Fonda, for instance, had a decades long reputation for playing salt of the earth types…people who were genuinely good inside and looked out for others.  This made his role of Frank, the cold-blooded killer in Once Upon A Time In The West, all the more shocking.

In Green Room, unfortunately, Darcy’s role is presented as one of cold expediency.  He is evil, yes, but in a cold, methodological way.  In other words: When presented with problem “a”, he logically figures out the steps needed to clean it up.  The evil presented here is -purposely, I suspect- like the Nazi collaborators of World War II.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for a particularly gripping bad guy.  Worse, unlike seeing the evil Henry Fonda’s character was capable in Once Upon A Time In The West, Darcy’s evil is done by surrogates and therefore he’s always above the fray and doesn’t become the hissable villain we really needed to have.

Coming away from the film, I was left with other questions as well.  One of the big ones involved the injury sustained to one of the band members very early in the film and when they realized, without a shadow of doubt, that their lives were in mortal danger.  The injury presented (I won’t go into spoilers here) is gruesome and chilling and kudos to the special effects department for the way it was presented.

However, such an injury would clearly be life threatening to the character that received it.  This injury must have severed many, many blood vessels and arteries and yet the character continues on doesn’t bleed out.

Further, after a while I couldn’t help but wonder why Darcy and his crew didn’t just rush the damn green room and blast everyone away.  Granted, the script tried to explain this but…I dunno.  Again, I don’t want to go into spoilers but it just seemed the bad guys were holding back more than they needed to…and ultimately that was to the benefit of the “good guys” and the resolution of the film.

Despite all that, I still think Green Room is a decent, tense siege thriller.  If you don’t think to hard about certain elements of the film (as I did), you will find this an enjoyable nail-bitter.  It is also a film not for the squeamish!