Released in 2019, the film is a thriller story where members of a militia try to figure out which one of them is responsible for a mass shooting of police officers in time to ward off the retribution of the cops investigating them. Their investigation grows tender as the cops close in and there are radio reports of more militia shootings targeting cops across the country.
Tropes
- Affably Evil: Hubbel is the most laidback of the militia members and shows some A Father to His Men feelings while discussing his old construction crew, but he is the only one who unambiguously wants the militia to go to war with the cops and admits that he murdered a man who was going to get him and his crew in trouble for accidentally using bad concrete on a highway and causing a pile-up.
- Bottle Episode: Except for a couple of short flashbacks and the opening scene where Gannon shoots a deer in the woods and then goes back to his trailer, the whole film takes place either inside the warehouse the militia operates out of or the grounds within a hundred feet of the loading dock.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The film takes place over less than twelve hours, and that counts the minute or so at the beginning where Gannon shoots a deer during the daytime and then the scene cuts to that night.
- Freudian Excuse: Cop-hating Jerkass Morris has an abusive father who caused him to hate authority figures and also claims that his daughter was raped and killed by a gang that included an undercover cop who helped kill her to keep his cover and never got punished for it.
- Gray-and-Gray Morality: Neither side is completely demonized, but both are willing to do some nasty things for beliefs which may or may not be valid and understandable. The militia members have some valid reasons to hate and distrust the police and display few if any explicit Alt-Right leanings. However, they do contain at least four members who have either committed murder or considered doing so for antisocial reasons before the film even starts and consider killing a possibly innocent man to serve as a scapegoat and take the heat off themselves. The police expect their undercover officers to do some awful things to maintain their cover and set up Ford, Morris, Keating, Hubbel, and Beckmann to get into a standoff with the police over a False Flag Operation and get killed. However, Noah argues that the militia had some genuinely dangerous members in it and probably would have carried out a mass shooting eventually if the cops had left them alone. He also suggests that the incident can be used as a rallying point for stricter control methods that will stop future mass shooters.
- Manly Men Can Hunt: Two of the seven militiamen, Gannon and Hubbel, were coming back from successful deer hunts during the shooting.
- The Smart Guy: Beckmann is a teacher and radio expert who is Genre Savvy about what happens in mass shootings (both in terms of police responses when they suspect terrorism and how most shooters commit suicide at the scene). Keating proves to be even smarter once he finally drops his mute act. He nearly graduated from college when he was nineteen and is an eloquent speaker with an eidetic memory, a wide range of arcane knowledge, and keen social insight. That being said, he is also far more dangerous and unstable than Beckmann.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: When Gannon questions the other militia members one-by-one early on, it is revealed that Noah is an undercover cop keeping tabs on the militia (with Gannon being his Secret-Keeper). Noah says his handler died during the shooting, so he will be unable to prove this and can’t use his status to help himself or the group during the investigation. It turns out he is lying and faked the series of shootings as a False Flag Operation to wipe the militia out.
